COUNTY COUNCILS AND ROAD BOARDS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume I, Issue 14, 30 October 1878, Page 2

COUNTY COUNCILS AND ROAD BOARDS.

In our last issue we published a few remarks made by Mr Hall in the Legislative Council on the second reading of the Bill amending the Counties Act. expressed himself as favorable to the present dual system. By the following report it will be seen that the most diverse opinions were expressed. The report is well worthy of perusal by those who take an interest in local government, and it is the duty of every settler to concern himself in such an important matter :

The Hon. Sir F. Dillon Bell said this was no party question : but recognizing, as they must all do, the final termination of the provincial system, they must find some organisation which would enable the words “ local government ” to mean something much more real than they iiad now. The county over which his honorable friend Mr Hall presided was not a fair instance of the results of the county system. It included within its boundaries a very large area of country, thus fulfilling the fundamental principle laid down, when the Imperial .Government changed its old county form of government to the present system of local government, by the founder of the change, Mr Stansfeld, which was to organise wide areas possessing local sympathies and historical associations. All the laws which they could pass, and all the programmes which politicians might make, would not change the distinctive features under which the settlements were originally established. The Otago men would continue to be Otago men, the Canterbury men would continue to be Canterbury men, the Wellington men would continue to be Wellington men, for a great number of years to come yet ; and every attempt to set up a Procrustean bed upon which they should all lie alike would fail. In this country, owing to its peculiar geographical features and the manner in which the settlements were formed, there never could be a metropolis ; and every attempt to govern from a pure centralisation at Wellington would only end in producing even greater dissatisfaction than already existed. The county government was not only mere humbug in a great many cases, it was pure tyranny in others. It w; s also an extravagant system, and even a profligate one in many ways. What was it they used to hear at the time of the Abolition discussions ? That the great effect produced by [the change would be to cheapen the government of the country to the people. Nine years ago he had endeavored, when in the other House of Parliament, to dismiss, in a financial sense, the same predictions indulged in at that time. But what did they find now ? Whereas the cost of the legislative bodies of the provinces had amounted to less than £40,000 a year, the cost of the county form of government already amounted to £BO,OOO a year, without any good work being done. Then, what was the advice which, in contradiction to his honorable friend Mr Hall, he ventured to give the Government ? It was not to increase the powers of the counties, but to increase those of the Road Boards, and enabled these latter bodies to work out their own local government,/ ’"'eythemselves were best able to do iK/*»- i*e they would take the most interest in it. If, instead of setting up a political organisa tion such as the county system was becoming, and if, instead of having two systems running concurrently side by side, they were satisfied with one organisation, then they might make local government a success; but they would never do so with these two sets of bodies having concurrent rights of taxation, and exactly that repetition of concurrent powers which had ruined the relations between the General Government and the Provincial Governments in the past,

Now, he would not care if the Government abolished the Road Boards, and I te «*ve powers to the counties instead, Mr* ugh he preferred having the Road Boards strengthened and the counties weakened : he would be quite content to have the Road Boards abolished and the counties strengthened, provided they did not have the two organisations : at the same time, he thought that they would fail, and have to return to what he advised—namely, strengthening the Road Roards throughout the country. If they were going to give any real local organisation at all—if they were going to make this exchange front the provincial system really acceptable to the people—they must adopt a far broader and more statesmanlike basis than the one in this Bill, which he could only designate as a trumpery proposal. They must go to the bottom of it, and his view of going to the bottom of it was to elevate the status of the Road Boards, endeavour to induce people of property and intelligence in each county to take an interest in their organisation, and lead up to the gradual agglomeration of Road Boards for county purposes, district purposes, or rather—he must apologise for the term—provincial purposes, fitting these Boards, in fact, for the duty of carrying on in the existing provincial districts that reality of local government which they could not hope to have for a great many years to come on any such general system as the present law had set up. The Hon. Mr Waterhouse said his honorable frieqd Sir F. Dillon Bell had referred to the Counties Act of 1876 as being a conspicuous failure; but the honorable gentleman had, after that statement, gone on, somewhat inconsistently, to recommend to the Government that their action in the future should be similar to the action they proposed on the present occasion, and that they should not interfere with the county organisation at all. Now, in respect to that he differed from the honorable gentleman. He was inclined to think tlie statement was correct that, as regarded most of the counties, the Act had been a failure, while at the same time admitting that there might be cases—notably the case referred to by the lion. Mr Ilall—where the county organisation hud worked smoothly and efficaciously; but he thought that the organisation was originally founded upon a totally erroneous basis. The view he maintained at the time, and which he adhered to now after the experience they had gained of the working of the county system, was that all they required from the first was an efficient system of Road Boards to be instituted throughout the whole country, and that this should simply be supplemented by a provincial district main road organisation to take charge of the main roads of the country. At present the counties in many cases failed to perform this duty, which he considered the main cause of their being brought into existence at all. He would refer, as an illustration, to the various counties in the Provincial District of Wellington. Take, for instance, the ~ =- ~, County: A portion of the main road to Napier ran through that county. For tin* upper fifteen miles of the county it ran through a district in which no rates whalevef were collected. That ten or fifteen miles of the road was no benefit to the ratepayers in the county at large, and, ; not unnaturally, they would hesitate to keep that |>ortion of the main road in order if the charge connected with its maintenance was to be d» frayed out of their rates. Take another case, the Wairarapa Counties. There was there a main road through the Forty-Mile Bush, some forty or fifty miles in extent. There was no county traffic whatever upon that main road, and immediately the Government ceased to expend money upon it it would naturally fall out of repair, for the simple reason that members of the County Council would not contribute funds towards a road in which they had no interest whatever. The true system of dealing with this matter would have been to establish in each provincial district—what existed and worked well in the other colonies, and particularly in South Australia, with which he had been a long time associated —a Main Road Board, which should have charge of all the main fines of road, and, if necessary, have power, by a special rate, to maintain those roads in a state of repair. Unless this system were adopted it was quite clear that in many counties portions of main lines of road would fall out of repair, ;ind irreparable mischief would he inflicted. The Hon. Mr Campbell thought it was exceedingly desirable that this Bill should be withdrawn for the present session, because it was necessary to have another year’s experience of the working of County Councils before they make any amendment of the Act. His honorable friend Sir F. Dillon Bell had said that the County Councils had, in their operations, been a conspicuous failure. Well, he (Mr Campbell) would only speak of the county with which he had something to do, and which contained a population of 18,000 or 20,000 people ; and he could say, from the experience of the last two years, that the working of the system there had been most beneficial, and that, if the people were polled on the question of whether they would return to the old provincial system or continue under the county system, they would decide largely in favor of the latter. As regarded the Road Boards and the counties, he admitted that it was very difficult to draw the line as to where one left off and the other began. Aud his honorable friend Mr Waterhouse referred to the main roads. Now, in the administration of the affairs of the Waitaki County Council he had found great difficulty in deciding what was a main road. The Council happened to have some money to their credit, and the result was that the Road Boards were continually wanting to have roads made main roads. In the Waiarcka Valley and other parts of the county considerable pressure had been brought to bear upon the County Council to declare each road a main road, which would involve considerahb|* expenditure in the maintenance of tip oads. With regard to the relative e\ 4 .uiture of Road Boards ami County Councils, he had been looking over the expenditure of the Waitaki County Council, and he found that, with an outlay of £11,900, the expenses had only been £B7O. The Hon. Mr Bonar said there was no doubt that in many counties, and more especially those containing no large extent of rateable property, the main roads were the great difficulty. This was a question which he fully expected would have been dealt with this year, but he did not altogether regret that it had been deferred to

a future period. In speaking of the county in his part of the world, he might say that, on the whole, they had derived a decided advantage through having adopted the county system of government in substitution for the provincial system. Many honorable members, and particularly those residing in large districts with large rateable properties, had said a great deal in favour of Road Boards. Now, the experience of the people on the West Coast had been that the expenses of the management of Road Boards had been.very great indeed, and that gradually these Road Boards found it advisable to merge their individuality into the County Council. This process was going on by degrees, and probably before next session they would find that there would be no Road Boards in the County of Westland, but that the whole would, practically, become either one large Road Board district or a county, whichever they liked to call it, and that the administration would be more efficiently carried on than under the present dual system. Speaking for his own particular district, he thought there could be no question as to the inexpensive character of the county machinery as compared with that of the provincial system. The Hon. Colonel Whitmore said it should be remembered that the county system was not an unqualified success be- , cause the circumstances of the different parts of the colony varied so much. For instance, one honorable gentleman spoke of Wairarapa East, and another of the Province of Canterbury, where the Road Board districts were very large ; but a system which would apply in some provinces would be extremely difficult of application in places where the Road Board districts were as large as the counties. To attempt to apply a uniform system might make it necessary to break up the Road Board districts and form them anew on a smaller scale. Ilis own view was that they should have made no distinction in the matter of county roads. The Road Boards ought to have been the roadmaking bodies. There might have been some instances in which the Government of the colony, owing to the uninhabited nature of the country, might have been asked to take over some roads, although there would be, year by year, less necessity for it. He referred to such roads as that leading from Tauranga to Napier, which passed through a wholly uninhabited district ; the road from Christchurch to Hokitika ; and other similar roads. In all other instances he believed the true system would have been to have imposed upon the Road Boards the duty of keeping the roads in order, leaving the County Councils to discharge the functions of a purely distributing body, to insure uniformity of administration, and to aid the weaker districts. The lion. Sir F. Dillon Bell said the cost of the county system was something like £BO,OOO a year, while the cost of the provincial organisation was only £40,000 a year. Upon that point he thought the honorable gentleman’s calculations were very far from correct. However, if the two bodies, the counties and the Road Boards, were to exist as at present, he had no hesitation in saying that the County Councils must be the superior body, lie desired defend the predecessors of the present Government for having introduced the voluntary clause into the Bill of 1876, because, although he admitted that a groat deal of inconvenience was experienced from it just now, and though it would be a great comfort if the clause were expunged from the Act, still it was impossible at the time to say what was best for the circumstances of the country. The Hon. Sir F. Dillon Bell complained that pastoral tenants were taxed in one part of the country and not in another. That difficulty would be remedied before long : they would be taxed in all parts of the country, and that, he thought, was perfectly fair. He could never understand upon what principle they were exempted. He was glad to bear from the Hon. Mr Bonar that the County Councils were a success in his part of the country, because he was not prepared for that; but he wished to point out that he did not think they would get nearer to a solution of the difficulty by merging the Road Boards into the counties. That would be a return to modified Provincialism, a Provincialism deprived of its most valuable features. He felt certain that the attachment of the people to the Road Board system was so great over livesixths of New Zealand that if the Road Boards were merged into the counties they would bring about a system which would make their future legislation more difficult than ever. When the first Counties Bill was brought in the Hon. Mr Waterhouse said it was only another taxing machine—another mode of wringing taxes out of the people—and he said that he had prophesied from the first that that would be result of the way the Public Works policy was administered. The honorable gentleman had not proved wrong in that respect. For the moment they were not feeling the full edge of local taxation, for they had a buffer between them, and it in the shape of the subsidies ; but he warned honorable gentlemen that the subsidies were only a straw that might he wafted away at any time by the will of Parliament, and they must not lean upon that support, but begin to look upon local government as a mode of distributing the taxation raised from their own pockets, which was what it was intended to he and must become. At this moment one-fourteenth of the money expended by County Councils and Road Boards was drawn from the pockets of the ratepayers, and thirteen-fourteenths were contributed, in one form and another by the General Government. That was a state of things which could not possibly continue, and the sooner they reversed the position and regarded the matter from a proper point of view the sooner they would find a remedy for any defects there might he in the present legislation. But he felt quite certain that, whenever the public mind had reached the proper level, and looked upon the local government of the country from a practical point of view, which it had hardly yet begun to do, the ultimate result would be that the system under which they would hereafter live would he one nearly approximate to the system he sketched out in 1876. Several honorable gentlemen had. during the last few days, when referring to this subject, also suggested the system that lie thought would be ultimately adopted—namely, a system of moderate-sized Road Boards, with County Councils consisting of delegates from those bodies to work for the common good. Still, the Government had no idea at present of disturbing the exist- | ing arrangement, or of coining down and ! recommending that the Act should be re- ' pealed, until it had proved itself, what he I denied ii had yet, a failure,—Hansard.

Nuisance. The residents in the neighborhood of the Catholic Chapel complain of the effluvia arising from a dead horse, buried only a few inches below the surface. The stench we are informed is intolerable, and must be dangeious to the health of the inhabitants. We are not aware that the local Road Board has yet formed itself into a Board of Health, hut it is time that steps were taken in that direction.

Unlicensed Pedlars.—Several persons who have been hawking- goods without a license, have been cautioned by Mr Maddigan, the officer in charge of the police station here, and no doubt the effect of the caution will be to increase the funds at the disposal of the County Council, as the license fees are part of the revenue of that body. Immigrants per City of Auckland.— Bight of the male immigrants of the illfated ship City of Auckland, arrived in Waipawa by the first train on Monday morning, having been engaged by Mr H. H. Bridge, of Onga Onga. The men are stalwart specimens of humanity, and the fact of their obtaining good employment immediately after arrival should impress them favorably with the colony. Customs Revenue!.—The following is the Customs return for the several ports of New Zealand during the quarter ended 30th September, 1878 : Quarter ended Corresponding

Sept 30,1877. Quarter, 1878, Auckland .. £53,225 .. £59,960 Wellington .. 44,889 57,527 Napier 9,340 11,391 Nelson 6,923 9,938 Hokitika 8,237 6.356 Lyttelton .. 52,026 62^996 Dunedin .. 89,278 105,885 Invercargill 6,578 11,140 —The tota amount collected throughout the colony was £305,493 ; corresponding quarter for 1877, £309,008.