LOANS FOR TEN YEARS.

Matamata Record, Volume XIII, Issue 1108, 24 March 1930, Page 5

LOANS FOR TEN YEARS.

POLICY OF BOARD. Tar Sealing Main Roads. i A definite statement that the Local ; Body Loans Board had decided that : [ loans for tar-sealing main highways . 1 should be for a period of 10 years, ■ 1 and not for 20 years, was made by 1 the chairman, Cr. W. R. Lowry, at I Tuesday’s meeting of the Piako County Council. t The board had told the deputation from the council that .visited Wellington last month that they were simply going on the advice of thefr expert advisers. They did not want to leave the millstone of a longterm loan around the necks of local bodies years after the roads for which the loans were raised had worn out. Their experts thought some other method of road construction might supersede concreting or tar-sealing within the next ten years. The board realised that the present maintenance of macadamised roads now going on in the Piako County was worse than useless. There was a hint dropped by the board that if the Piako County did not go on with the tar-sealing of its roads the • Highways Board would do the. work themselves and charge the county. This would cost the county much more than if it did the work itself. Cr.. F. W. Walters (Waitoa) said he was holding out for a £3 for £1 subsidy on a ten years loan. At present the Loans Board was only offering a £2 for £1 subsidy. The chairman said the county would have to do a lot of construction work on the road in the Morrinsville riding. It was not merely • a case of sealing a properly-con- ; structed metal road as on the Kiwitahi road.

The engineer said tar-sealing was regarded by< engineers as merely a maintenance work to keep the metal together. The chairman said that in ten years they might be able to get the board to lay down a concrete road, but they could not afford, to pay maintenance costs on their macadamised roads for the next ten years. Cr. W. F. Stark (Morrinsville) said there was a difference of only £SOO between a £2 and a £3 subsidy . for the Waitoa riding, and he could not see why Cr. Walters should hold . up the work of tar-sealing the road for a mere £SOO. They were losing about that much every year in maintenance of the present road. He sidered that a £2 for £1 subsidy on the Hamilton-Te Aroha road was a much better proposition than a £3 ‘for £1 subsidy on a trunk road like the Great South road from Auckland to the Waikato. There was nothing for the Piako County Council to do but to lay down a tar-sealed road. He was tired of bumping over the present road, and was determined to go on with the work of tar-sealing the main road in . the Morrinsville riding. The board offered a 10 years term, for a tar-sealed road and a 20 years term for a concrete road. After going into the position with officials in Wellington he was not going to say they were wrong. After hearing the chairman’s and Cr. Stark’s explanations of the attitude of the Loans Board, Cr. Kennedy asked the clerk to take steps to hold a poll in the Waihou riding to sanction a loan for a period of 10 years for tar-sealing the five miles of main road in. the riding. Cr. Walters said he had been waiting to hear the results of the recent tests of the concrete penetration road constructed by the Waitemata County. chairman said the officials of the Highways Board had refused to consider concrete penetration as a surface for the road.

Cr. Walters replied that his ratepayers would not go on with the proposal to tar-seal their road until they knew the results of the concrete penetration tests.