MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS ACTS AMENDMENT ACT, 1880.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 490, 15 June 1880, Page 2

MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS ACTS AMENDMENT ACT, 1880.

(N.Z.' Times).

This Bill provides for the amendment of the several Acts relating to Municipal Corporations. Under its provisions it is proposed that notice of petition or counter petition, affecting municipal matters or local grievance, shall be given to the local ; bodies adjacent to the municipality wherein the petition arises. Severance from a borough may be effected by the unopposed petition of not less than twothirds of the burgesses of any ward of a divided borough, or not less than one-sixth of the total number of burgesses in an undivided borough, praying for a severance of a part of such borough; the same to bs severed within two months by proclamation, and annexed to adjacent borough, county, or road district with which the portion so severed forms one continuous area, Land included in a borough may,b9 added to particular wards. ° Moneys raised on special loans, and moneys belonging to the "borough, to be oaid into a separate account; small boroughs to be permitted to pay eight per cent on loans not exceeding £IOOO, and whenever any special loan has been raised under the Act, and it shall be found that the sums intended to be thereby raised will not suffice for the objietg of the loan, and the burgesses of the borough shall by a subsequent resolution approve of a larger sum being raised) the Governor may by Order in Council declare proceedings in reference to the original loan rescinded, and the larger sum authorised to be raised under the second resolution shall be deemed to be the special loan authorised and be raised accordingly. The definition "revenues" in the Wellington Loans Consolidation Act, 1876, is not to include any special rate made or to be made subsequent to the raising of moneys under that Act, unless such special rate is made for the oxpress purposes securing the moneys borrowed under that Act, or the interest thereon. The Bill gives powerto Inspectors of Nuisances to exorcise their functions on private lands within a borough, gives the Council power to declare private streets public streets, to abate nuisances on private lands, as on public, to recover cost, if the owner is unknown, by selling and conveying land or otherwise under provisions of the Rating Act, 1876, also to require private lands to be lpvelled. and to control conatruction'of cellars on private lands. Additional by-laws are also proposed for regulating the sale of meat and perishable provisions, for the inspections of lodg-ing-houses, prevention of Sunday traffic, and for dealing with hedges, The Bill also provides for the repeal of Clause 106 of the Municipal Corporations Act, 1876,, to the extent that money of a Corporation may be paid into more than one bank if it should at any time appear to the Council that the interests of the ratepayers would be served by the adoption of such a course. It is also proposed that "no liability shall attach to the Council by means of fixing the permanent level of any street, and therefore forming the street according to such level, whether'at the time of doing so the said street was made and used as a street," or was unmade," providing the requirements of the Act are observed, Other miscellaneous provisions are also introduced, authorising the Council to leaso lands by tender, to make rates a preferable claim on bankrupt and insolvent estates, to recover from adjacent local bodies for work done as if upon contract, to empower the Town Clerk to represent the' Council in Court, and to repeal section 39 of the Municipal Act, and in lieu thereof substitute one giving every burgess entitled to vote at any municipal election one, voto only. The Bill also provides that where gaßworks have been established in any Borough under tho authority of an : Act of the Assembly it shall not be lawful for the Council to establish any . other gasworks to supply the same locality or any part thereof, until after the Council has offend

to purchase such gasworksTat^ptiM^^^B be agreed upon, or failing agreement^^H the Public Works ' Act, oiler thus made has teen refused!.