HEAVY TRAFFIC FEES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 256, 12 October 1932, Page 5

HEAVY TRAFFIC FEES

DISCUSSED BY PATANGATA ALLOCATION NOT ACCEPTED (Special Representative.) The allocation of heavy traffic fees was the subject of further discussion at the Patangata County Council’s monthly meeting yesterday, when a letter was received from the clerk of the Hawke’s Bay County Council containing a table of statistics, showing the allocation of heavy traffic fees for the year ended March 3, 1932. The Patangata county’s total of the allocation was shown as £863 7s 6d.

In a further letter the Hawke’s Bay county asked whether the Patangata county agreed to the fees up to March 3, 1933, being on the same basis as for the year ended March 3, 1832. The chairman (Mr C. Pattison) remarked that the allocations submitted were not in accordance with the resolution passed at the recent conference of county engineers. The engineer (Mr J. C. McLauchlan) said that according to the resolution the allocation was to be based, equally on mileage of metalled roads, cost of maintenance per mile, use of roads and capital value. ALLOCATION SET OUT. The county’s allocation, however, was not based on these factors, as 25 per cent, of the allocation was based on the total cost of maintenance, instead of on the cost of maintenance per mile. Such a state of affairs gave the Hawke’s Bay county a double benefit, in view of the fact that it had a large mileage of metalled roads. The allocations for maintenance, as set out, were as follows, the figures for the same factor, if correctly based on the cost of maintenance per mile, being given in parentheses:— Hawke’s Bay County, £514 13s (£147 Ils 7d); Dannevirke, £333 9s (£233 17s 10d); Woodville £lOO 17s 6d (£144 15s 10d); Waipawa, £2Ol (£122 10s sd); Waipukurau, £26 is (£9l 18s); Weber, £74 9s (£459 8s 8d); Wairoa, £289 10s (£345 5s 4d); Patangata, £273 10s (£2Bl 4s 6d); Havelock North, £5 8s ( —); Taladale Town Board, £7 14s 8d (—). On the motion of Cr. R. A. White, seconded by Cr. E. T. Wilder, it was decided to reply to the Hawke’s Bay county that the Patangata County Council was unable to accept the former body’s «deilnition of the decision of the engineers’ conference. In the allocation set out the mileage of metalled roads had been taken into account twice. Failing the amendment of the allocation to take the cost of maintenance per mile as a quarter factor, as agreed at the conference, the council considered that the matter should be referred to the Minister of Transport.