HIGH VALUATIONS OF LAND.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 16 June 1924, Page 4

HIGH VALUATIONS OF LAND.

A very important matter was brought before the Eltham County Council at its meeting on Saturday, when the chairman (Mr C. J. Belcher) referred to tlie question of obtaining a revaluation of the Hawera, Eltham and Waimate counties. The last valuation was made at the time when land prices were at the peak, and a revaluation is obviously necessary. Two vears ago Mr Flanagan (Valuer-General) promised to see what lie could do, but so far nothing has been done. In the meantime some ratepayers arc taking advantage of the provisions of the la’ enabling them, upon payment of the fee, to have a revaluation made. Among those who have done this is Mr J. G. Quin, who valued the Eltham County, and, as five chairman said, made a good valuation, having regard to prices and conditions then prevailing. No one can fairly blame Mr Quin and other ratepayers who have bad revaluations made sinee those days; in fact, the reduction under tlie new valuation of Mr Quin’s property is a clear indication of how fairly he valued his own property when lie had in hand the task of valuing tlie county. Probably Mr Quin would value liis own property on the high side at the time. However, tlie valuations of three or four years ago were an entirely different matter from what they are to-day. and there could, in our opinion, be no stronger case for the setting of lower land values throughout South Taranaki than the fact that the valuer of the Eltham County Council has found it ne-

cessary to have the value which he set upon his own property revised. As readers know, the Star has said on several occasions that in our opinion land values must come down before a healthy economic condition can be restored, Mr Quin’s action, in which he is perfectly justified, is the best evidence that we could have that our attitude is the correct one. Separate revolutions of private properties for which the law provides and of which advantage has been taken will, however, lead to anomalies as shown by Mr Belcher. The, only solution is a new valuation of the Eltham, Hawera and Waimate counties, and it is to be hoped that it will be undertaken as early as possible, so that anomalies which arise from new valuations of separate properties may be overcome, but, more important, so that the farm lands of the whole of the three counties named may be brought down to fair and reasonable values, having regard to the conditions prevailing and the lower prices obtained for dairy produce.