£10,483 COOK HOSPITAL LEVY: BOROUGH HAS NO RECOURSE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22915, 6 April 1949, Page 6

£10,483 COOK HOSPITAL LEVY: BOROUGH HAS NO RECOURSE

“If the council spends £75, that sum represents one-sixty-fourth of a penny in the pound on the rates over the whole borough,” stated the Mayor, Mr. N. H. Bull, speaking at last pight’s meeting of the Gisborne Borough Council. The council was considering a letter from the Cook Hospital Board, intimating that the council’s share of the hospital levy for the year 1949-50 would be £10.483, as against £9628 for the year .iust concluded. The Mayor explained that the council merely acted as a collecting agent for the Cook Hospital Board, which could levy up to 5d in the pound of capitalvalue.' That, was the maximum which the board could levy, but if the values in the borough rose, as they were now in process of doing, the actual payments bv the council must increase. An objectionable feature of this procedure was that higher payments by the council would only relieve the consolidated fund of part of its burden; the consolidated fund being the source from which the balance of hospital costs —over and above the contributing local bodies’ levies—was drawn. “It is the law, of course, and we can’t do anything but comply with the demand.” added Mr. Bull. “It is necessary, however, that the borough ratepayers should know that the council has no share in fixing hospital expenditure or the amount of the levy collected for Hospital expenditure.