ELECTRIC POWER BOARD CONTROVERSY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 28 August 1929, Page 4

ELECTRIC POWER BOARD CONTROVERSY.

Sir, —The poll 011 this most important question takes place next week and it seems that most of us ratepayers will have to vote not on what we know and can see for ourselves, but on what we are told by one side or the other. This is unfortunate, but it is just what one always gets in the case of local body polls. Those wanting the poll are led. by the nose by some expert, and those opposing it fmd that the public as a wjiole are lethargic and uninterested. Surely tiie history of New Zealand, filled with examples of colossal waste in pulblic expenditure. wouLd liave caused the ratepayers throughout the country to take a more active interest in their own welfare. But enough of lamentations. Thus it is, and tuns 1 suppose it always will be. 1 have read with considerable care all the correspondence and public statements by the Power Board and 1 must say that the conclusion 1 have formed is that Air Alurdoch does not fully understand the case lie is propounding. Like everyone else, 1 am not in a position to get to the .bottom of the whole business, but the statements persisted in iby Air Alurdock seem to me to point to the tact that the Power Board’s case is no way near as watertight ns they would have it. Let us consider a few of his statements: (1) The company is making huge profits, 16 per cent, and 20 per cent.— Air Murdoch must know .perfectly well that the company valued the whole of its assets in 1927, which showed that the shares were worth £BO,OOO. Since then the company hag been, only able to pay approximately 8 per cent, on £BO,OOO. The two years when dividends of 16 per cent, and 20 per cent, were paid respectively was on the original capital of approximately £26,000, or in other words tne company had been putting money into the business for yeans and had not capitalised same until quite 'lately. AVhen the position was clarified iby the valuation in 1927 the concern lias since only shown 8 per cent. Now, what is the position so far as tlie Power Board is concerned?—The £BO,OOO concern is costing the Power Board approximately £136,000, with costs and expenses. For do not forget Mr Ratepayer that aill the costs and expenses incurred by the board since its inauguration are a dead loss and have to be addedi to the price. If the Electric Company is able to pay 8 per cent, on £BO,OOO then on £136,000, which is the price the ratepayers are paying, tlie concern shows a dividend of under 5 per cent. So where is the huge profit that Air Alurdoch persists in imagining that the ratepayers are going to get? If the ratepayers, liad got the business for £BO,OOO then certainly it would have been an excellent proposition, but it is no good' talking in the ridiculous manner Mr Alurdoch, talks about these huge profits being available for the ratepayers, when all the time they have got to pay a. price getting on for twice as much for the concern.

(2) There never will be a rate.—What does Air Murdoch know about it? You cannot tell me that he knows anything at alii about Power Boards. Assertion is not enough and every single proposal that has ever been put before ratepayers in New Zealand has always been proposed; by good but misguided public men who have had a large stake in the communty they were representing. No one denies Air Alurdoch's and the others’ public spirited and disinterested service to the community, but surely we are not going to accept their judgment as being omnipotent. The long and short of all public utility undertakings in New Zealand is that every Power Board is lead by the nose by one expert, their consulting engineer, and that, is precisely the position in South Taranaki. It iis the board’s engineer who has prepared statistics which satisfied the hoard that everything in the garden is lovely and they simply have to swallow his dope because he is the man who is supposed to know. The boa.rd, on taking over the company’s undertaking, has a revenue of £25,000. The board on its own statement is. going to have an annual expenditure at the end of the I third year of £31,000 and it has therefore got to find an increased 'revenue of over £6OOO in older to come, out square, even assuming that the estimated expenditure is correct. For my part I refuse to believe that it is correct, and believe that the expenditure, like nearly every other pre-estimate of expenditure, will prove to be entirely inadequate, because, say what you like, public bodies' never are run as economically as private companries and the board’s .statement of £31,000 is based on the company’s own expenditure (and that a. smaller concern), which Air Bone assures us will be ample. I doubt it. (3) The engineer proposes, to change the system from a 5,500 system to a 11.000 vault and puts the cost of conversion at £6OOO. I challenge Air Alurdooli to give us ratepayers details of how this ds made up, as my reading of • lie evidence that appeared in the papers at the time of tlie hearing was that it would cost more than douible this amount.

In conclusion. I suggest that it is quite clear that the South Taranaki Electric Power Board is going to change thisi happy little central system into a comprehensive South Taranaki scheme at the expense of the thickly populated centres and is sacrificing the whole of the profits of the Electric Company in this larger undertaking instead of being content with the smaller scheme and using the profits to reduce charges. What is the use of telling me that the cost of electricity will come down in 25 years’ time? 1 will probably be playing on a golden harp by then and wont want any light, because, as yon know, it says in the Scriptures, “There will he no more night.” Wliat I am interested; in is that I shan’t have to pay a rate for the rest of my sojourn in this land of weal and woe,. —1 am, etc. SPOTLIGHT.