SOLDIER SETTLERS AND RATES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 152, 29 June 1926, Page 13

SOLDIER SETTLERS AND RATES.

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PENALISED BY PROTECTION.

HINDRANCE TO ROADING PROGRESS. (From Our Owa Correspondent.) MORRINSVILLE, Monday. The fact that it is impossible for county councils to take any legal steps to collect rates from the lands of assisted discharged soldier settlers is causing both the County Council and the soldier settlers grave concern, in. that not only are the soldiers' rates sometimes lost to tho council, but also that so long as the present position prevails roading progress in the soldier settlements is at a standstill. Naturally the County Council will not permit the soldiers to embark upon a roading scheme until there is some security of collecting the special rates, and it appears as though the soldiers are penalised by their own protection. In a recent letter, the Prime Minister, then Minister of Public Works, expressed the opinion that k. county council would be quite safe in proceeding with special loan works on account of recent amending legislation, but a more recent opinion from the Piako county solicitor is quite contradictory. "The real trouble," the opinion states, "is not about suing the soldier settlers, but is concerned with the ultimate recover}' of the rates as affecting the land." The opinion goes on to state that if the Crown is the grantor of a lease or a license to the soldier settler (which is usually the case), such property could not be sold for nun-payment of rates. Application must be made to the Land Board for the forfeiture of the section, and the board might declare that not exceeding three years' rates may be paid out of the value of the improvements to bo obtained from the incoming tenant. If there were no improvements, or these were mortgaged to the Crown, there would be no obligation to pay. "... The recovery of the rate is fraught with difficulty. It affects the security. The difficulty is applicable to all Crow:, tenants, * but in the case of the soldie. settler it is accentuated by the far" that the Crown's interests are usually so very large that there is little left for the rates."

For several years now the Kereone settlers have been endeavouring to have themselves placed on a civilian basis, so that the county council will have some security in collecting the rates, their object being to raise a loan for the metalling of their roads, which are bog holes in the wet weather, and at the last of a series of meetings which the soldiers have held during the past few weeks they decided as a result of the county solicitor's opinion, to 'send delegates to Wellington this week, -in company with the county chairman (Mr. W. R. Lowry), in order to request that they be placed on a civilian basis, or, failing that, to ask the Government to metal the roads and load the land with the cost.

In deciding to place data before the Minister to show the large amount of produce that came off the settlement, the chairman of the meeting said: "We want them to know we are well off. We want to be treated as civilians/ not like babies."