SUMMIT ROAD TRUST

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21773, 4 May 1936, Page 8

SUMMIT ROAD TRUST

TO TH« T.DJTOB OT TH« PRESS. Sir, —An omission from, the otherwise excellent report of the annual meeting of the Port Hills-Akaroa Road Public Trust in yesterday's issue of "The Press" is of sufficient importance to the members of the trust to justify attention being called to it. Mr W. S. Mac Gibbon, in seconding Mr J. S. Barnett's motion, "That the meeting be adjourned until the balance-sheet is available from the Government auditor," did so provided the mover altered it by leaving out reference to the Government auditor and adding that the balance-sheet should be submitted to the adjourned meeting for adoption "subject to audit." Mr Barnett accepted this amendment, and it was his motion as amended that was agreed to. The significance of the amendment is that it is intended to reduce the period that the members of the trust will have to wait for the balancesheet to be submitted. As is generally known, the financial year of most local bodies ends on March 31, and consequently Government audit officers are very busy at this time of the year, and it may be a month or two, perhaps longer, before an officer is available to audit the trust's balancesheet. Naturally, the audit of local bodies' balance-sheets takes precedence. Probably the adjourned meeting of the trust will be prepared to receive and discuss a balance-sheet subject to audit—a procedure to which no objection was raised at the annual meeting last year. But it should be possible for the balance-sheet to be audited within a reasonable period by the honorary auditor of the trust, and it could be adopted subject to the Government audit. It is stated that the Government audit is a statutory requirement, but I am informed that it is only so when an association, like the trust, registered under the Incorporated Societies' Act, makes no provision for an audit. If it be so, the necessity for the Government audit in respect of the balance-sheet of the trust does not now exist. As the Government audit has to be paid for. it would be well if the Board of Trustees ascertained exactly what is the position. If it is not necessary, n is a luxury that the trust could very well do without. —Yours, etc.. A MEMBER. May 1. 1936. [The secretary of the Summit Road Trust. Mr L. B. Freeman, commenting on this letter, said that the report in "The Press" was correct. The purpose of the adjournment was to allow a duly audited balance-sheet to be presented to the resumed meeting ot' the trust, and Mr Barnett's motion had not been amended as the correspondent claimed. Mr MacGibbon's suggestion had been merely that the balance-sheet should be presented to members as being "subject to audit." but it had been no more than a suggestion and had not been included in the motion.]