A. SCOTT, IN REPLY TO "ANTIGAMMON."
- -•—■ —- TO THE BDITOIt. Let tho (talli-d j.-ul« wince, My withers .ire umvrung. Sin,—Your correspondent, " Antigammon" (whom I take to be the real "Simon Pure," wanting the prolix from tho extraordinary manner he has tried to throw dust into the eyes of the ratepayers, by what ho purports to be his TRUE balance-sheet for the current year, has not tho courage of his opinion, else ho would not have taken the coward's priroleße, of shielding himself behind the veil of anonymity. Why he has taken this course is best known to himself, the general interpretation is, that he cannot substantiate what he has asserted. h\ my letter I attacked the Rencral policy of our present Council, and put mv name to it. Ho, in reply, has attacked me personally, but skulks behind a hedge to do so. He charges me, First: With n political axe to grind; Second : With beinp a political agent; Third: With having obstructed the planting of the Lake reserve,; Fourth : With tho failure of tho famous abbnttoir scheme; Fifth : With attempting to saddle Hamilton with a third white elephant, or batho. Numbers one and two are mere clap trap, the proverbial red herring business, a branch of education your correspondent has evidently graduated in with hi«h honour. The object I had in view in writing upon our present financial position, was to arouse ratepayers to take an intelligent and active interest in the election of councillors. Whether I have succeeded, tho polling day will show. As for number three, "obstructing the planting of the Lake rsserve," this is untrue, as no motion ever came before the Council to my recollection to have this done. What was brought before it was to have the reserve fenced and ploughed, for which I voted. The fact that the public, through the impecunious state of tho Council's funds, had to start subscription lists, asking a poor and already over-taxed community lo contribute towards the late planting bee, I is a sad reflection upon the mismanagement of the Domain Board, and a subject your correspondent ought to have felt ashamed to have alluded to. As to charge number four, re tho failure of the abattoir scheme, the facts are simply these : The borough was to expend £1000 on abattoirs, a syndicate, guaranteeing 0 per cent, on outlay for the first seven years, and 8 per cent, for the second seven years, but there was nu claim in the agreement binding the syndicate to koep the abattDirs in full operation, for the term of fourteen years, nor yet any compensation clause to the Borough should they fail to do so. On this omission a portion of the Council took issue, had the syndicate, after a year or two finding that the abattoirs were not paying thrown up the whole arrangement, what would have been our position ? Simply this, wo should have had a lot of useless buildings thrown upon our hands situated outside of tho Borough boundary, and for our £1000 hard cash we should have at the end of fourteen years, received the sum of £210 this amount representing the difference between the six and eight percent, paid by the syndicate, and per cent, we pay for the money. It may bo argued that there was a probability of success ; granted, but this could not have been urged with any more force than that it might have turned out a failure, in which case, as I have shown, we should have been considerably tho loser, and as representatives of the burgesses, the objectors had a right to demand that the onus of success or non-success should not be thrown whollv upon the Borough by having the bofore-mentioned clauses inserted. * our correspondent, by some strange oversight, has fi.rgotten to mention the fact that S3 ratepayers sent a petition to the Council, praying them not to spend this money on abattoirs, and the scurvy and contemptible treatment this petition received at tho hands of "A. G." and his colleagues is a matter of history, and will not readily be forgotten by those who signed it. Mr W. A. Graham the then Mayor, who although the initiator of tho scheme, expressed his conviction that in the face of the petition they dared not proceed with it. This, coupled with the fact that Captain Steele who represented the syndicate, having seen tho petition wrote a letter to tho Council, withdrawing from the arrangement (said letter having been suppressed, and never read at the Council's meetings, why this was done I leave others to infer) virtually quashed tho whole affair. The fifth and last charge he brings against me runs thus, "But for the opposition to his efforts which the Council made, Hamilton would have been saddled with a third bath, and would have possessed two white elephants instead of only one." This admission comes with a bad grace, seeing that A.G. and those allied with him were the means of having the borough saddled with this white elephant. A.G. is mild and bland, and would.have us believe he is dull of comprehension also, in not seeing that an amendment to have n third bath was purely ironical, made out of derision, and put forth as an emphatic protest against what was then the wilful misspending of public money, which unfortunately for us has proved too true. In enumerating my many delinquencies cs an obstructionist, A. G. by some unaccountable oversight, omitted my opposition to what would certainly have been another white elephant, only on a much larger scale, "Tho Hamilton Public Buildings." Had your high-minded and immaculate correspondent remembered or had it suited' his purpose to mention this fact he might have continued on in this strain : " But tor him the Hamilton Public Buildings would have been erected, and, crowning the height on the site selected for them in untenanted uselessness a lasting monument, to the folly, extravagance and cupditity of those who, while hoping to roap some temporary benefit from the money expended upon them, would have totally ignored the true interests of the Borough and the welfare of their fellow citizens." Now just a few words concerning his " true . balance - sheet," which the clerk of the Council asjures me is not a copy of the Borough balancesheet for 1888, as that document is at prosent in tho hands of the auditor, but a few items picked out hero and there from tho Borough books to suit his own purposes. The valuation is £0,000, at Is in tho £, the samo as my own, but by a printer's error, was made to appear (1000, as the outcome was stated correctly, viz., o-(lths of 330, equals, £275. To thia sum "Anti Gammon" has added, rates unpaid, which have been accruing for the last eleven years, the sum of £28(1, as if the amount were actually in hand, and then coolly takess-6ths off tho gross amount. It is well-known that rates above two years old are not recoverable by law. Why did not " Anti Gammon" tell the burgesses what sum of that £280 was irrecoverable. That would not suit his policy, and as ho has not done so, it is only fair to assume that IMlths of it is still owing, and unclaimablo, that is, allowing that each year has an average amount of bad rates. Endowment rents are put down at £86. I am assured by the Clerk that this is only £02. Government subsidy, he has down at £102. As subsidy is paid at 5s in the £, and that only upon rates actually collected, which means five-sixths of £330 or £275 equals £08 odd, " A. G." ought to explain how he gets the difference between that sum and £102. "A. G." takes exception to my mixing up Borough matters with Domain. I did so for the sake of perspicuity, to show at what a rate we are being governed as a body. If the exception holds good, why may I ask "A. G." did the manager of the Bank of New Zealand send to the Council a request, "that they should, as a Council, take over the domain liability," to which request the Council, by a letter from their clerk, formally agreed. "A.G.,"in detailing expenditure, strikes an average for the past three years, knowing full well that interest for overdraft would be a mere nothing the first year. Why did he not truthfully detail to us the income and expenditure for 188S ? Under the head of expenditnre comes lighting, £30 per annum for this item alone, in tho year 1887, the sum of £07 odd was paid, how he accounts for a dro? of over 50 per cent, in the other two years, to make his figures right I am at a loss to know. A. G. had very conveniently forgotten to tell us how much was paid for legal services, during that time, but simply slates solicitors retaining fees are abolished. Since when, and why were they abolished, is it since March 31st, 1888 1 If so they ought to have been shown in the expenditure ; and was it from a retrenching motion they were abolished, or was it because the auditor refused to pass them ? A. G. finishes up by stating that there is a sum of £407 available for grading. Well, considering wo commenced the year 18S7-88 with an actual debt of £10S 17s lOd and this according to the borough balance-sheet, we have recovered ourselves to the extent'of £515. Happy Hamilton! There is in foreign parts, Mr Editor, an animal of the snake specie called a boa constrictor wh»se capacity for stowing is great but who previous to doing this,
slimes his victim all over. Well Sir, while reading this balance-sheet of AntiGammon's tho sliming process passed in mental review before me, and I beheld our beautiful township in the jaws of the monster ; but I took consolation from tho fact that many instances have happened, when tho monster after repletion, has been found in a burst-up condition, dead. So mav we hopo that this will be the political fate of any one bold enough who attempts to slime us over first, and then tries to swallow us afterwards, may bad digestion await his appetite.—Yours <fcc. A. Scott.
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Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2523, 11 September 1888, Page 3
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1,712A. SCOTT, IN REPLY TO "ANTIGAMMON." Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2523, 11 September 1888, Page 3
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