ONEHUNGA'S FINANCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 116, 17 May 1924, Page 13

ONEHUNGA'S FINANCE.

ESTIMATES FOR THE YEAR. PROGRESS OF THE BOROUGH. The new estimates of income ahd expenditure have been made and adopted by the Onehunga Borough Council. The total working costs come to the substantial sum of £25,120, or about £2583 less than last year. The reduction is accounted for by the saving in streets maintenance, especially Queen Street, since it was paved with concrete, and the space occupied by the double tramways brought under the control of the Auckland City Council. The amount set down for street maintenance this year is £4000. The heaviest outlay will •be in the. waterworks department. After providing for the cost of refitting! tho pump with a new crank shaft, roughly speaking £200, the council expects to spend about £6SOO here. A new centrifugal pump, driven by an electric, motor, is to be installed, which will be capable of delivering 20,000 gallons of water per hour into the reservoir at One Tree Hill. The motor, of course, will be supplied with electricity by the Auckland Electric Power Board. At present the pump is driven by three suction gas engines, and the gas for these is manufactured on the premises, out of coke, in two generators. The latter are to be discarded, and replaced with one generator of double their capacity. When these improvements to the pumping plant have been completed the driving power will ibe increased to five times its present capacity, or thereabouts. Another advantage of equal importance to this increased power is thtt fact that there will always be one spare pump, as a standby in case of an emergency, even in the driest weather, when the greatest consumption of water is always registered, and revenue derived from the sale of water this year by the council will not pay for all these improvements, in addition to the annual_ upkeep of the plant, etc All the same the council is able to finance them, as, owing to careful management, the past year closed with a surplus of revenue over expenditure of £2000. It is feasable and reasonable that the balance required for the new machinery should come out of general revenue for, as is well known in Onehunga, the excess profits earned by the waterworks department have always been used for general purposes to keep down the rates. The foregoing estimates will give some idea of the growth of Onehunga since its inception as a iborough. When the first rate struck was sixpence in the £ on the capital value, this was to cover all expenditure for the year. An old resident of the town, Who well remembers the first meeting' of the new council, relates that when the Mayor proposed to strike a sixpence rate, one member protested against any rate being struck at all. He said he would agree to the resolution provided it was for one year only, and that no more rates should be collected after that.