BETTERMENT BILL

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 32, 6 August 1930, Page 4

BETTERMENT BILL

BUSINESS MEN'S; PROTEST

A special committee of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce; after considering the provisions of the Wellington. City Betterment Bill, has rcportod as follows to the chamber:— ■ "The committee recommends to the council that protest bo recorded from the Wellington Chamber against the Wellington. City Betterment Bill proposed to be introduced in the present session of Parliament. The Bill is to apply to the local municipality, and, apart from this limited application, no ease, in the committee's opinion^ has been made out for the Bill.

"By exercise of powers Tinder the Public Works Act and Municipal Corporations Act, local bodies are already enabled/to carry out any particular improvement, and safeguards offer to ratepayers by the recourse necessary to a poll before the increasing of tha indebtedness of the community, general or. individual; where improvements have a wider application, the city as a whole will derive a measure of civic betterment, and this, it is considered, is met now in the most equitable way under -the system of rating on unimproved, values which arc revised from time,to time in accordance with the developing city. "Any enforcement of works upon ratepayers in the manner for which power is sought has potentialities for unreasonable interference with private ownership and private enterprise, and business -interests especially will view with', apprehonsion the proposed legislation." pri the motion of Mr. 0. J. B. Norwood, the report was adopted at a meeting of the Council of the Chamber of Commerce last evening.