The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1925. THE DRAINAGE LOAN.

Evening Star, Issue 19044, 12 September 1925, Page 6

The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1925. THE DRAINAGE LOAN.

It was really a piece of officiousness for the Local Bills Committee of tho Legislative Council to try and alter the £250,,000 Loan Empowering Bill for Dunedin drainage purposes so that tho borrowing of the money should be conditional on the ratepayers’ sanction expressed at a poll. The reason put forward by tho chairman of tho committee was that the interests of democracy demanded this precaution. The Hon. R. Mooro said there was at stake the big principle whether bit by bit the ratepayers should be deprived of the right to authorise the works by which they wore.directly affected. This generality may have sounded very lofty and statesmanlike in tho serene and austere environment in which it was uttered, but the particular circumstances attendant on the birth of the measure cut away the roots of the opposition raised by the sticklers for formalities. For those formalities would in this case bo altogether superfluous, as was adequately explained by those Legislative Councillors possessed of local knowledge, and fortunately tho bulk of their colleagues were persuaded by them and passed tho Bill in its original form, shorn of tho proviso which the Local Bills Committee had attached. Tho Bill is tho Dunedin Corporation’s recognition of a very pronounced and general feeling among all citizens that drainage construction work, brought to a halt many years ago, must bo resumed and not again allowed to lapse until the essentials of a schema, long designed on paper, have been carried out to completion. The indignation of sufferers from the 1923 floods and the not over-swift determination of that too subordinate branch of the City Council (the Drainage Board) to provide against a repetition of that unfortunate experience suggest that the Legislative Council Local Bills Committee has viewed the position through the wrong end of tho telescope. It is not a case of the local authority having to cajole the ratepayers into letting it borrow for drainage completion purposes; It is rather a case of the citizens demanding that the local authority shall subside no more into a parsimonious—yet, as events proved, terribly expensive—lethargy, but shall awake and finish the long overdue residue of its work. And, if recent precedent goes for anything, the citizens of Dunedin will not be slug-

gif>h in finding the necessary money themselves w'ithout having to go outside for a loan. Local body debentures are a favorite form of investment in this community, lor the interest is sure, the security is thoroughly well known, the formalities of investment are reduced to tho minimum of purchase over the counter, and tbo purpose of this loan has already been demonstratively approved by the people. All that should now remain for tho citizens to do in this mutter is to subscribe tho money and thereafter take an intelligent interest in its expenditure,' so that it shall be used to the best advantage in accordance with plans long ago drawn up.