THE ONSLOW LOAN SCHEME.

Evening Post, Volume LV, Issue 64, 17 March 1898, Page 2

THE ONSLOW LOAN SCHEME.

A meeting of Onslovv South Ward ratepayers was held at Wadestown last night to consider the proposed £5000 loan. The Mayor (Mr. J. Holmes) presided, and stated that the loan, the poll for which was to have been taken yesterday, had fallen through in consequence of an informality in the published notices. The Act required the special rate proposed to be struck as security for the loan to be specified in the notice, and as this provision had not been complied with, the whole proceedings would have to be begun de yoyo. As he gathered I from a. letter in the Evening Post that South Ward ratepayers were not satisfied with the proposed scheme of works, he had called them together to invite suggestions for the re-modelling of the schedule. A long discussion ensued, many figures being quoted and the claims of the various parts of the borough to improvement being well ventilated. It was also suggested that a portion of the amount allotted to South Ward should be devoted to a recreation ground. Eventually a motion was submitted that the schedule of works previously decided on should be approved, with the exception that, instead of £640 being spent on a road to Crofton, £400 should be spent on Wadestown main road and £240 on other streets in the ward. An amendment was to the effect that the meeting adhered to the decision come to at a previous meeting — viz., that the Councillors for the ward move in the Council for a special ward loan. Twelve bands were held up for the amendment and ten. for the motion, and the meeting broke up in some disorder, amid a warm display of temper by the supporters of the loan proposal from the North Ward, and its opponents in the South. The position would now appear to be that a special meeting of the Borough Council will be held on Friday evening to re-open the whole question, when the South Ward Councillors will probably move for a special ward loan. As this would have the etfect of killing the £5000 loan proposal — seeing that a loan raised in the particular wards affected would not produce sufficient to make a new road to Kliandallah, which is the object of the whole movement— it will doubtless be rejected, and it will then be open to any Councillor to move to remodel the schedule of works. In this case the £640 allotted to a road from Wadestown to Crofton is likely to be diverted, chiefly to the improvement of the Wadestown main road.