BOROUGH LOAN PROPOSALS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4845, 14 May 1936, Page 4

BOROUGH LOAN PROPOSALS.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —I notice in your columns that Mr. T. M. O'Connell takes it upon himself to say that the Borough loan has not much chance of being carried in its present form. Personally, Ido not agree with Mr. O'Connell. If the loan for waterworks is not carried, it will be pretty hard on the people of Te Kuiti, for the Te Kuiti Borough supply main, unlike the Te Kuiti Borough lorry, wilf not go on for ever; in fact, as we have found out recently, it has already a habit of stopping temporarily. And if the people of Te Kuiti don't carry the water loan, it appears to be quite o.i the cards that they will be numbered amongst the great unwashed. Mr. O'Connell is very worried about this cement lining of pipes and wants us to consider very carefully whether we should not put in a new main from the reservoir altogether—and with the same ink goes on to say that if the Council eliminated the roads loan and then divided the other one in two it would have a better chance of receiving the endorsement of the ratepayers! Now the cost of lifting, cement lining and hessian wrapping of the pipeline to the reservoir is set down by the engineer at £7OOO, and he is reported to have stated that this method is somewhere about a third of the cost of new pipes! Yet Mr. O'Connell, appearing to think new pipes necessary, wants to halve our water loan! As for our present pipeline being in sufficiently good condition to cement-line, a pipe usually breaks at the weakest spot, and I think the engineer has quite a lot of knowledge of those weak spots and has, I believe, sent representative samples to Wellington for testing. As far as I understand, lifting and cement lining is an established practice. There is a new method of lining pipes when in the ground, but this is not favoured here because the outside as well as the inside of the pipes is deteriorating. Outside advice is desired by Mr. O'Connell. It seems quite reasonable, but Te Kuiti has had occasion to have a number of reports on its water supply system, and the present engineer has these at his command when going into the matter. I'm very definitely a layman, but I think that beyond a certain limit an outsider would find the vagaries of our water system much less an open book than the man whose chief worry it'has been for years and who, for tapping the leaks at the reservoir, should receive our hearty thanks. With the Public Works Inspector going thorugh the plans I can see no great cause to worry. Mr. O'Connell talks of savings under the streets sealing scheme. As I understand it the position is this. For the pleasure of 31 miles of sealed streets we must pay £450 in loan charges and maintenance per annum. The present cost of maintenance is £290, so that the annual extra cost would be £l6O a year for this amenity—really slightly less, because I believe that the Council should anddoes intend to spend more maintenance money on our gravel roads. However, I am not so greatly worried about this loan, and would leave it to the ratepayers to decide whether the sealing is worth the increased annual commitment, but I do think that our water is necessary and the work should be tackled just as soon as is reasonably possible and before the pipeline from the reservoir is so far gone that we have to renew it and pay three times as much.—l am, etc., RUSTY PIPES.