RATE DEMANDS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 45, 21 August 1924, Page 6

RATE DEMANDS

MAY BE ISSUED NEST WEEK.

The clerical staff of the City Rates Department is this week hard at it checking over the rate demands, which will probably bo issued in about a week's time, and which will be payable immediately on issue. As last year, the full year's rates will bo sought in one sum, the system under which the year's rateswere payable in two instalments having now been dehnitely discarded. - This is the first year of the incidence of one consolidated special rate of l^d in the £ on unimproved value, a flat rate over city and suburbs doing away with something like 30 special rates, and, speaking generally, the effect of that consolidation will be that suburban rates will tend to drop slightly while rates over tho i«ty area will climb to a'corresponding extent.

The effect of the consolidation of special rates upon the amount to bo paid into tho City Treasury by each citizen concerned must also, of course, bo considered in conjunction with differences in general rates decided upon by the City Council recently. This year the general rate is to bo 2 7-10 don unimproved value (last year 3d), the hospital rate 4d in the £ on animal value (4£d last year), the water rate. 4£ per cent. on annual value (last year 4 per cent.), and the library rate 16-200 d. on unimproved value (last year 14-200 d). 'The decreases in the main rates balance off, roughly, the increases in others, the final result beinrr that the total amount which will be collected from ratepayers will be a few thousands above the figure for last year, with a tendency, as stated above, for the city areas to pay a little more and the suburbs a. little less.