Lyttelton’s vote on its library

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34128, 14 April 1976, Page 20

Lyttelton’s vote on its library

By voting against a loan proposal, about 200 Lyttelton ratepayers have blocked the Lyttelton Borough Council's plans to provide the town with a new library. The losers will be the people of Lyttelton who might otherwise have had an adequate new library on a satisfactory site before very long. Although approval of new loans has been suspended by the Government, the borough may lose precedence in its approach to the Local Authorities Loans Board. The vote must mean a fresh application for any new scheme—if, indeed, any application is made.

Those who organised the petition which required the council to hold the ratepayers’ poll on its last application to raise a loan to build a new library, and who led the campaign against the proposal, have insisted that their objection was not to a new library but to the new site chosen by the council. Sincere as they may have been in this, much of their support in the poll may have come from people who, thinking only of the rates they pay, voted against having any new library. These opponents may, of course, have other projects in mind for Lyttelton. Nevertheless, the council remains convinced that the old library building’s life has ended.

The arguments put up against the new site, and in favour of the site occupied by the present library are not necessarily soundly based. The council’s new site is more readily accessible to pedestrians and less troubled by traffic noise; its main disadvantage is that it has less space for expansion. The council cannot be faulted for attempting to give Lyttelton the best library possible on the best possible site. But it can be faulted for not promoting its ideas more vigorously among ratepayers. In a larger poll the result might well have been different. For this failure, the council will now have to start from scratch and submit new plans to the loans board. To avoid having its new plans defeated, the council will have to impress on a majority of the borough’s ratepayers that it is important that Lyttelton gets the new library it needs before costs rise still further.

These problems are Lyttelton’s. But the way in which a small group of ratepayers has been able to thwart the council, and probably the best interests of Lyttelton, raises issues of importance to many other communities. Ratepayers’ polls on loan proposals allow ratepayers some say. This is desirable. But the questions are usually so narrow that they cannot be regarded as an opportunity for the community to express a considered decision on any complicated questions. Had the people of Lyttelton been able to vote on which site they wanted, the council would have secured a real indication of people’s preferences. Further, only a limited number of people are entitled to vote in such polls, which effectively disenfranchises many who have an interest in the amenities of their community and who contribute indirectly to the rates local bodies raise. There is a clear need to revise the terms on which ratepayers’ polls are conducted.