NEW LYNN CIVIC CENTRE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 46, 24 February 1927, Page 16

NEW LYNN CIVIC CENTRE.

Fn reference to Mr. Win. J. Taylor's remarks in a recent issue, the calling rip of the loans being spread over ten rears will obviate the necessity for ''heavy and sudden increase in rates," the natural increase in ratepayers will distribute the burden, and the aim of the board being to make all capital that is capable of such manipulation, revenue producing, makes it extremely probable that our low rates will never be trebled. It will be more costly in the long run to modify these schemes and less satisfactory. For the year ended March 31, 1P26. the amount on which interest and finking fund was spent for maintenance ami improvement of streets is surprising. and there was little (if any) permanent result. "Nothing multiplied by infinity, gives nothing!"' I put it to you that New Zealand is the finest country in the world. Auckland is the finest city in New Zealand. Let us then make New Lynn the finest suburb o;' Auckland.

J. S. AKEHURST. Will you kindly permit me space to fay that some four years ago the rates o:i the average home of four to five rooms in this district were between £6 and £f> per annum, and we had absolvUdy nothing to show for it beyond a cinder path at the station and a few clay roads with no paths at all. However, two years ago the residents got busy and passed the rating on the unimproved value, with the result that our rates came down to one-third of the former rating, where they now stand, and I venture to suggest that the majority of the New Lynn residents would gladly go back to their old rating if only for the sake of having decent sanitary arrangements, let alone the roading and civic centre schemes. Assuming the figures given by your correspondent to be correct, our rates would not be anything as high as they were under the old rating, and we should have something to show for them, particularly in the civic centre scheme. It is only fair to this board —who have undoubtedly done more in their short 'Tm of office than, their predecessors ever dreamed of—to detail the loan and not call it "£23,000 for a civic centre." Twelve thousand pounds is the sum a-ked for the civic centre against £145.000 for roading and £73,000 for drainage. The loan certainly looks very ambitious on the surface of it, but when one considers the past five years of waste, patch and promise, it is the only logical solution, and the longer it put off the less chance New Lynn has m ever getting it. A. J. FORSTER.