Ceremony Marks End Of County

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31333, 1 April 1967, Page 20

Ceremony Marks End Of County

The merger would be of inestimable value to the county ratepayers and to New Zealand as a whole, said the chairman of the Tawera County Council (Mr W. H. Faulkner) at a ceremony at Springfield on Thursday afternoon to mark the end of the county.

From today the county will be part of Malvern county. Mr Faulkner and Mr R. M. D. Johnson will represent Tawera until 1971, when there will be one representative chosen.

Present at the ceremony were members of both counties and their wives, the former Minister of Transport (Mr McAlpine), the District Commissioner of Works (Mr D. B. Dallas) and representatives from the Selwyn Plantation Board, the Central Canterbury Electric Power Board, and the National Roads Board. Mr Faulkner said that the merger had been achieved in a friendly manner, and he was convinced there was no problem that could not be solved where there were reasonable men to sit around a conference table. He thanked members of the council for their co-operation and the time and local knowledge they had given. A presentation was made to Mrs M. H. Taylor, of Christchurch, who was associated with the county for 25 years as chief clerk to the County Clerk (Mr C. O. Spiller). Early Days

A member of the council since 1923 and chairman for 30 years, Mr Johnson said the council first met on May 17, 1910, with Mr James Seymour as chairman. The next two chairmen before himself and Mr Faulkner were Messrs W. K. McAlpine and H. A. Millar.

One of the early problems the council had to face was when coaches stopped running and the then Public Works Department put the responsibility for maintaining the road on the council, said Mr Johnson.

. The council found it could not afford to maintain the road, so closed part of it. This brought Government action, and the county was given £3OO a year assistance. The council decided it would be better off paying the Government £3OO a year in return for the Public Works Department looking after the roads. The National Roads Board now spent at least £30,000 a year on the same road, said Mr Johnson. The “tremendous” co-opera-tion of local farmers in the floods of 1951, when 12}in of rain fell in less than two days, was mentioned by Mr Johnson. He said the district was nearly wrecked, with roads, bridges, and the railway damaged or destroyed. The farmers looked after stock from the trains and repaired roads and bridges. “Wise” Decision The fact that the amalgamation had come about indicated that the people of the

district were forward-looking and not afraid of change, said Mr Dallas. The least he could say was that the decision to merge was a wise one. Mr Dallas said there might one day be three counties, with one in the area from the Waipara to the Waimakariri rivers centered on Rangtora, another from the Waimakariri river to the Rakaia river with Rolleston as its' base and with the name of Selwyn county, and the third the Banks Peninsula area. The chairman of the Malvern County Council (Mr C. O. Redfern) thanked the members of the Tawera council for the co-operation shown over the years as a neighbouring county. He said the amalgamation of the Selwyn and Malvern counties (which took place about four years ago) had proved a great success, and he was sure the new merger would be as successful.