New group wants rates reform

Press, 23 January 1979, Page 1

New group wants rates reform

PA Wellington Rates reformers are planning a national campaign against what they consider excessive spending and empire-building by city, borough and county councils. The 17-member standing committee of the newlyfarmed Rates Reform Association will meet in Wellington today to start planning its policy and tactics for the campaign. The committee’s chairman, Mr B. Weyburne, said yesterday that the group would consider a national advertising campaign to attract supporters. The next move would probably be a petitiontype campaign to sign up supporters for the proposition that rates increases should stop. This phase of the campaign would probably start with a pilot petition in. Wellington to gain experience, before committees in other areas started collecting signatures. Mr Weyburne said the core of the association’s campagn would be “no more rate increases.” “If councils want more money, they will have to raise' it from the fourfifths, of the population

wha do not own property and consequently do not pay rates,” he said. “But we really want councils to cut down their activities rather than get more funds from alternative sources.” “Since we started recently, and with no advertising, we have had people contact us alleging that the Wellington City Council could change its book-keeping methods to save up to 14 jobs on calculating wages alone. “We have also been

told that the number of building inspectors was established during the boom and that the department is over-staffed now that the rate of building has fallen,” Mr Weyburne said. “Subdivision staff are another thing — they have people just occupying desks because the level of land development has dropped to almost nothing. “The council work gangs are just a joke,” he alleged.