LOAN PROPOSALS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 55, 8 March 1929, Page 8

LOAN PROPOSALS

(To the Editor.)

•kir.—l have watched with keen interest the cay loan proposals and agree with every word of your able article in last mglit s (Wednesday's) issue. One point .1 desire to raise. How does it come that the council is able to spend £ 161,000 on the eastern scheme under a loan authority .many years old without consulting the ratepayers? Has that money been raised? If so, how is it invested? I live in a neglected suburb. During the last three years at least thirty houses have been erected in the immediate locality, and not one penny spent by the council on either roads or footpaths. 'Do the councillors think that I and thousands of others are going to load our backs with further rates in order to' glorify them by undertaking vast schemes of purely local value to other parts of the city? My proposal is, that a local district be created comprising the area that will be benefited by the eastern scheme, and let the ratepayers and landowners who are to reap the benefit decide whether they will have the work and pay the interest in the form of special rates. Another doubtful part of the scheme is that profits of the tramway and lighting" departments are to be transferred to one or other or both of these access schemes. These profits have come from the whole mass of ratepayers, and should be given back in ' decreased charges. If there aro such profits, let them be transferred to the water account, the rates Tor which are now absolutely awful. Not only so, but Government valuers have recently been scouring some of the suburbs, and I reckon we're in for a hot time when the new

council drop for a year the whole sclicim-, except Quinton's corner, and set their house in order by tackling the roads and footpaths in the suburbs. May I ask, sir. if you will take an early opportunity of stating the actual gross and net debt of the city, how spent, the annual charges involved, and how these are met. It will be an eyeopener, and I fancy will go a long way towards stopping the self-glori-fication now so rampant in civic circles.— I am, etc.. JUNIUS 1. (To the Editor.) Sir, —As a long-suifering ratepayer, permit me to express appreciation of your article dealing with the access problem. Nino years ago rates and loan commitments were entirely different. Katepaycri to-day are heavily burdened, and it is grossly unfair, in view of the altered circumstances, that they should be allowed no opportunity of effectively expressing an opinion by vote. As for the suggestion that approaches should be commenced while the situation regarding the main work remains in doubt, I venture to conjecture that no competent business man, be ho city councillor or otherwise; would conduct hii own business transactions in such a manner. —I am, etc., . i ORIENT.