HAVELOCK WATER RATING SYSTEM.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 85, 20 March 1922, Page 7

HAVELOCK WATER RATING SYSTEM.

(To tlie Editor.) Sir, —I see by a report in Tuesday’s issue of the “Tribune” that the Havelock Town Board met to institute a system of water rate by taxation on land value in place of the present meter system. It seems to me a wrong thing that the board should be able to adopt so retrogressive and far-reaching a policy without a mandate from the ratepayers or residents of Havelock North. The change means the sacrificing of an asset that would in the course of a year or two make it possible to reduce our ordinary taxation by about half. Under the Maraetotara electric scheme it is estimated that water can be produced at about 2d per thousand gallons, and selling same to householders at cighteenpence per thousand gallons should be a gold mine to the ratepayers of Havelock. Bo away with the meter system and it will take all the water we can pump to keep the sunny slopes of Havelock green in the summer time. It will then become necessary to raise the rate all over, and the ratepayers and residents on the lower levels will be called on to pay for water they had no share in wasting. On the question of taxation on unimproved versus capital values we had to go through the form of presenting a petition, and have a ratepayers vote taken before wo could change over, but this, a really unfair proposition to a large section of the community can be shoved on to us without a “by your leave” of any sort.—l am, etc., JNO. D. HEENAN. Havelock North, March 16, 1922.