Waimapu Metalling Loan.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 7010, 17 July 1918, Page 4

Waimapu Metalling Loan.

Tc the Editor

Sir, —Your correspondent, Mr G. Walker, appears to be following the tactics of the early worm that gets picked up by the bird, otherwise getting in early to avoid the crush. Let me inform your correspondent that this Council has no desira whatever to ask the ratepayers to vote in favour of any motalliDg scheme without having first of all a e;ood opportunity of discussing the question in all its details. For this purpose meetings are being arranged to be held at the Bethlehem and Otumoetai Schoolrooms, wheD the member representing Oiumcetoi, together with the supervisor and myself, will lay the whole matter before the ratepayers in detail. Until t-hen the question oi price, etc., is hardly worth discussing any more than to say that no Council, however lavish with the ratepayers' money, would ever dream of pejitig £2 per yard, or even half that sum, for metalling purposes. There are just one or two matters I should like to refer to for the benefit of any new settler unacquainted with county matters in the past. In the first place the whole of tbe metalling loan of £1100 borrowed by the Wai mapu Hiding sotoo years ago, was, with the exception of £150, spent entirely in metalling the Judea Hill, The rate for this loan is struck o?er the whole Kiding; therefore the Greerton, Oropi and Pye's fa eettlera are paying their share without receiving any material benefit whatever. Again the Greerton settlers have carried a loan of £1,000 over a special rating area, to which the Otumoetai portion of the Eiding contributes nothing, so all the latter are asked to do at present is to raise sufficient money to put the road from the Wairoa Bridge towards Tauranga in a fair state of repair, providing, of course, that the money is spent to the best advantage and to the entire approval of the majority. This part of the road is the weak link in the chain and in the winter is practically impassable. The Te Puna and Kaiikuti Sidings are applying to borrow £5000 and £6000, respectively, which, together with timber halves belonging to ths Katibati Biding, should greatly assist in putting the main road from Waihi to Taurenga in fair condition, and this work must necessarily enhance the value cf a1! properties within each individual Biding. I sincerely bust that tbe Otumoetai settlers "are not going to allow their portion of the main read to remain in such a coadition aa to render expenditure iv other parts of the county practically useless.—l am, etc.,

H. SOUTHEY.