ELECTRIC POWER BOARDS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 233, 14 September 1922, Page 4

ELECTRIC POWER BOARDS.

AMENDING BILL. (Special to “Tribune.”) Parliament Buildings, Sept. 13. The Electric Power Boards Amendment. read the first time in the House consists largely of machinery clauses, but there are also one or two points which, according to the Minister, require careful attention. Power is given for a member of the board to be elected by the ratepayers of the whole district instead of by the elector 8 of several constituent districts, each ratepayer having one vote only, whether or not he is ratepayer of more than one constituent district. This has been asked for by Power Boards on the score of economy. Another clause allows the constituent district in which the petition to constitute an area as an electric power district has not the required number of signatures, to be excluded, and the power district constituted as though the petition had been limited to the area in which the required signatures have been obtained. The bill provides for the merging of districts in one upon a petition of the majority of the ratepayers in each of the districts to be united. The bill proposes that if the boards affected ask for it, the boundaries may be altered, and that if one board does not agree a commission may be set up to report. The expanses of the first election may be paid from loan money, and, with the consent of the Minister, boards may erect dwellings for their employees. The Minister, in moving the first reading, said the legislation of last year provided for the preparation of rolls tor elections, but he proposed to simplify the system by allowing local bodies to use it for the purpose of their rate rolls. There would be a conference of Power Boards in Wellington shortly, imd he proposed to submit the bill and certain additional amendments to that conference for discussion.