RATING SEMI-RURAL LAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 85, 11 April 1931, Page 19

RATING SEMI-RURAL LAND.

In tho'se boroughs where there is a big margin of rural and semi-rural land enclosed, there is almost sure to be hardship among those who continue to eke out a living by engaging in primary production. The pseudo progress which prompts people to cut up their land and sell it, or unload it on the deposit system at anything, up to £2000 per acre, has merely started the ball' of progress rolling into trouble, for those inflated values become the basis of valuation for unimproved land within the borough. It is on this valuation also, and often of false security, that money is borrowed for developing the borough. In a case of reversion to realities, such as at present obtains, \the only way is to stop borrowing and hope for moxg settlement or population, until when the unimproved gating on fictitious valuations must be the least burden for the majority and the hardest on those who have had their little farmlets enclosed within the borough. When the borough is closely settled, then it will be found that capital value rating will, take the place of the unimproved rating. Whatever the method is, a certain amount of money has to fee fojind to pay interest and sinking fund on the loans and to run the business of administration. It seems a great pity in these days, when it is an urgent need for families to do a little more for themselves in the way of production and living, to be harassed in this direction by ridiculous and impossible valuations of what is really still farm land, and will be so for many years to come. By what way exception arid reduction in rates can be made to small farm holdings in a /borough is difficult to decide, for, after all, it was only a matter of chance, as it were, that the whole of the land within the borough did not become unloaded as building sections at everincreasing prices. Thus it is we see much of the- best farming land round j the city of Auckland neglected and being [covered with noxious weeds. How much I of this folly is owing to man's cupidity Z

Let us take as an example Waitemata County, where the majority of the land is purely rural, and where the unimproved valuation is reasonably low. Judging from the appearance of certain districts, there seems to be as much, or more, unimproved land than improved, and farm homes are in a minority. Here is where one would expect, not knowing the circumstances, that the rating would be best on the unimproved value, but we find that the county is rated on the capital value. This is due chiefly to absentee owners. Here the capital value rating is quite unjust to bona-fide farmers, who, as they make necessary improvements, hsvc their rates increased, whilst the rates of the totally unimproved land remain practically at a standstill. There is justice in this method, nor does it encourage land settlement. J.E.A.