WHOSE LIABILITY?

Grey River Argus, 19 August 1937, Page 4

WHOSE LIABILITY?

Deteriorated Lands COUNTY HARD UP FOR RATES. (Per Press Association]. NEW PLYMOUTH, August 18. Local body government was not a hobby, and local bodies should be prepared to administer areas of poorer land, just as they controlled areas where rates were more easily collectable, wrote the Minister of Internal Affairs, Hon. W. Parry, in reply to a petition by Whangamomona County rate-payers that the Government should take control of the County. The petition was signed by a hundred rate-payers who made the request on the ground that Whangamomona County Council could not efficiently administer the county with what rates and revenue are at its command. The County contains a considerable area of what is termed deteriorated land, from which it is difficult to collect rates, and in which some holdings have been abandoned.