Street numbers chaos in Raetihi

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 5, Issue 10, 4 August 1987, Page 3

Street numbers chaos in Raetihi

Raetihi residents will be receiving their new street numbers in the near future, like it or not, and will be levied for the new numbers in their rates. This action was decided at a recent full meeting of the Raetihi Borough Council. Re-numbering has been deemed essential due to long-term growth of the town. A recent attempt by Raetihi Primary School to distribute the numbers at $1.50 each failed, due to lack of public interest. There are 534 properties within the Borough needing re-numbering, a total of 1050 digits required. It was decided that the

Borough should purchase the numbers from the school and levy ratepayers at $1 a digit. Mayor Garrick Workman commented that he knew of some people who were annoyed by the move and were of the opinion the Borough had "come on a little bit strong." He also suggested that it might be a worthwhile exercise for someone to investigate into which houses were in need of renumbering and whether ratepayers would allow the numbers to be placed on their respective letterbox. "I'm worried that if we just hand them out, half the numbers won't get placed on letterboxes anyway," he said. Mr Workman said the Council faced the same

problem when houses in the Borough were renumbered several years ago. "People have grown used to their numbers and they don't want anything else, they're quite happy with what they've got on their letterbox or on their house." It was found that council would be overbudget if they employed people to place numbers on letterboxes and it was decided that volunteers would be called to assist councillors with the task.