STUBBORN COUNTY

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 141, 18 June 1927, Page 18

STUBBORN COUNTY

MAIN ROAD UPKEEP

A PREPOSTEROUS ATTITUDE

For a long time ono of the worst stretches of road on the Main No. 1 Highway between .Wellington' and Auckland was the twelve mile section from Ngaruawahia to Ohinewai in Waikato County. This road is the sole link between Auckland and Hamilton, but in the eyes of Waikato County its maintenance is Of no interest to anybody in the county except the farmers whose properties cither front directly on to it or not more *?ian a mile back on either side!

The county council allowed the road to deteriorate into such a state that it became almost impassable, and tho requests of the Main Highways Board that it should put the road in reasonable repair were ignored—it was doing all it could with the rates, it said. Fin-

ally, the Highways Board put the road in order itself." During the past eightecu months the board had spent :ES6SO ou the twelve miles. It is debiting the county council with a share of the cost on the basis of £1 out of evovy £3 expended; The County has thus received n bill for £1893, and at a meeting the other day it declared that it could hot meet it.

The county chairman, Mr. W. Newell, declared recently that . the county should receive special treatment. The total rates received along this piece of road, including an area of one mile margin back from it, amounted only to £407, and a traffic 'tally showed that 80 per cent.- of the traffic was from outside this area. : It was quite impossible to defray the bill out of the rates. '" , . . ■■'...•

"As the- view of Waikato County with regard to this section of road is similar to that of, many ! other local bodies, the matter is of more than local interest," states 'The New Zealand Herald's" motor contributor. "While Waikato County contends that the road is of national importance, it paradoxically refuses to admit that it is of county importance. The only county residents interested in the highway, it contends, are those who (actually live, on it. Nobody clsq in the county presumably ever wants to drive a motor vehicle over the main road, to Auckland. Waikato County has.a total revenue of nearly £28,000, and in addition there are three interior road boards with revenues totalling over £0000." A total of £37,000 in rates is thus produced in the county area, but the county share of the cost of the main, road is to be dumped on to the people who live along that highway, and the rest of the county residents aro to ride free over it. A county which regards its main road from this preposterous' point of view deserves no sympathy."