LAND VALUES LEAGUE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 25, 29 July 1926, Page 15

LAND VALUES LEAGUE

PREPARATION FOR RATING POLL.

At the monthly meeting of the Wellington branch of the Land Values League satisfactory progress was reported in connection with the proposed poll to extend to all rates in the city of Wellington the system of rating on the unimproved value. Mr. P. J. O'Regan, who presided, announced that he had himself obtained 600 signatures to the demand for the poll, and another member who preferred to be unnamed for the present had secured 500. There were 18,000 ratepayers in the city, and as 15 per cent, were required to sign the demand, they had to procure nearly 3000 signatures. There was not tho slightest doubt about getting them, however, because rating on unimproved values was decidedly popular. To place all the rates of the city on the unimproved value would reduce the rates for three-fourths of the citizens, while holders of bare sections wouW find themselves obliged to pay something like another 2d in the £. Nothing Aore practical could be done just now to abate the evil whereby a few rich men grew richer merely by doing nothing, and the encouragement given to building would do more than anything else to reduce the housing shortage and excessive rents. Moreover, the annual rate revenue of local bodies was now nearly £5,000,000, and to place all that where it ought to be would more than compensate for the partial repeal of the national land tax. Mr. O'Regan announced further that proceedings were in hand for polls in no fewer than four counties in different parts of the Dominion. It was resolved to go on with the work of preparation for the poll in Wellington, and to take active steps to secure the cooperation of other bodies.