MOTORISTS HIT AGAIN

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 17, 14 October 1927, Page 8

MOTORISTS HIT AGAIN

A COSTLY LEGAL TECHNICALITY. Wellington motorists have had little enough of their national motor tax spent on the local highways, and a considerable sum has beeut lost to them by a legal technicality that needs attention badly. Of the five and a quarter uiles of the Hutt Road, about three and a half miles is in Makara County, but under the Hutt Road Acts the entire road was years ago given the legal status of a Wellington City street. As the Main Highways Board does not pay out subsidies in city streets, the result of this has been that no national motor subsidies have been payable on Hutt Road aintenance. At present the maintenance subsidy payable on main highways is £3 of national motor tax funds to every £3 of local body money. Hutt Road maintenance, according to the City Year Book figures, was £2937 in 1924, 23301 in 1925, and £1340 in 1926. This year there is a slip down estimated to cost £3OOO to remove, and maintenance to pay on top of that. As the road was paved a few months before the Main Highways Act became operative, the chance of getting the usual £1 for £1 subsidy on. it was lost. There "is, however, not the least need for going on blindlv past the opportunitv of drawing £BOO to £lBOO annually in maintenance subsidies. Attention'has been- directed to the matter several times in these columns, but the local board of control appears to have small interest in conserving the interests of motor taxpayers, and so far as can be learned, has dime nothing whatever in the matter. Ignoring one source of motor tax revenue, it seeks to create another.