NEWMARKET LOAN PROPOSALS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 211, 5 September 1911, Page 2

NEWMARKET LOAN PROPOSALS.

(To the Editor.) 1 Sir, —Mr. Alf. E. Whittome has evidently failed to learn that although the ! absence of the advantages of early ' education may fail to make an 1 arithmetician it need not necessarily 1 fail to make a gentleman. Mr. Whittome seems more concerned about throwing dust in the eyes of the ratepayers than in turning his attention to the real point at issue. As he says: lam perfectly aware of what rates I have to pay this 3'ear, and by the same token (Le. the ratepaper), I find that although a 6d rate is not collected this year, that it •will be next year, and every succeeding | year until such debt is discharged. In ! addition to that 6d, if this loan is sanctioned another 1/3 in the £1 will have to be paid; and the ratepayers will be lucky if it reaches no higher than the 1/8 mentioned in my previous letter. They may find themselves in the same 'box as Mt. Eden and Grey Lynn, viz., their loan expended and their work only | half completed, a not unusual predica- | ment for local bodies to find themselves in. My first, contention was that the loan was being raised upon a WTOng basis, in face of the fact thai we were likely by law, or force of communistic development, to be in the near future compelled to join greater Auckland; and, therefore, the loan should be secured upon a general rate basis, and not a special rate; and in no sense did T write against the loan as a loan. 1 contended that whatever was done should be done in a businesslike and sensible manner in the best interest of the ratepayers' future; but when the loan.was still persisted in, upon the special rate basis, the ratepayers had no other recourse at their hands than to reject the loan.

It has 'bepn industriously reported that it will only require a 6£d rate to meet the loan. If that is true why does tbe advertisement state that the Government require a 1/3 rate to meet interest and sinking fund. Evidently the "nothing for nothing" policy does not apply here. But depend upon it, that whatever is borrowed will have to be repaid, and the ratepayers will' be particularly fortunate if the ultimate expenditure does not render them liable to a responsibility greater than 5/1 in the £. Mr. Whittome has carefully left out of his statement of total rates (2/6), water rate lOd, uncollected drainage (this vear) 6d, special rate to provide for loan (at his own quotation) 1/3; grand total, 5/1 as I have previously stated.—T am, etc.. GEO. BODLEY. Newmarket, September 4.