COUNTY RATE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1548, 30 November 1883, Page 2

COUNTY RATE.

To THE EWTOK,

Sir,—ln your leading article to-day you condemn the courso taken by your contemporary regarding the county rate. You point out that other local bodies have issued • peremptory demands for payment of rates, and have not been denounced for so doing. But it is well known that the county rating is a "new departure," the policy of which ought to have been made a county ratepayers' question and not ,

tnoroly settled by the councillors without the sanction of those most interested. But tlna ia not the worst grievance. The County; ; Council resolved upon a course of action' which would have put to the blush any other local body in Now Zealand.-' -They decided to get money from the Government for certain works under the pretense of collecting a special rate to repay the proportion payable to the Government, and then decided not to collect that rato but to. misapply the county funds by using the general rate for such a purpose. To my mind the whole transaction is one calling for investigation by iiuo Government,' and I think it is a great, pity that the reformer, Mr Hawkins, should neglect theso home wrongs and seek to rectify outside ones.

I am (fee., A Ratepayer. Masterton, November 28)'1833.

[Clause 60 of the Roads and Bridges Construction Act,, 1882, runs as follows: provisions of this Act, in any case where a special rate is made hereunder, which is leviable over the whole of the district of the local body making the same, if the local" body prefers to do so, it may pay out of its ordinary revenue any' one or more of the debentures given by it hereunder and which are secured on such special rate; and lis to any ySj&Mn which such local body shall so py such debentures, it may abstain from levying the said special rate, but without prejudice to all rights of levying the same in future years if the debentures be not so paid as in this section referred to." A consideration of this clause ought to convince our correspondent that the view he Is taking of the County rate is altogether a mistaken one,—Ed, W.D.]