“A COIIONSENSE sour

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 14 January 1937, Page 6

“A COIIONSENSE sour

LOCAL BODY AMALGAMATION

PROPOSAL DISCUSSED BY HARBOUR BOARD

QUESTION OF ECONOMY

“It is impossible for any local body, as such, to look at this thing from an unbiased point of view. It

is impossible because every man jack will be looking at it from his own personal point of view,” commented Mr W. C. Harley yesterday afternoon when the Nelson Harbour Board, finding itself with a small agenda paper, turned to a discussion on the proposed amalgamation of local bodies scheme which the Government has under consideration. Mr Harley had previously expressed his opinion that as far a.s he could gather from a hasty glance at the proposal, it was an excellent one.

It was a commonsense scheme to allow a voluntary amalgamation of local bodies within given areas. Apparently one of the chief local bodies in an area would be given power to convene a meeting of all the others in that area, and following that meeting the Government would appoint what was in effect a magisterial board to sit in the district, hear objections and report. The fact that “some tiddley-winking drainage board that was nobody or nothing,” might object would not be of much momept, of course. In theory, at least, said Mr Harley, the proposal was a very valuable one by which the people could save themselves money. "We are ridiculously over-boarded and overcommitteed,” went on Mr Harley. “We are all the time setting up committees, and who has ever heard of a committee being ‘un-set’? Once you have formed them they are there for good.” He visualised a Local Government Board in Nelson composed of members elected from the various bodies—probably a board of fifteen and sub-committees. The centralisation of finance in itself would be a very excellent thing. However Mr Harley, as above, ventured to forecast that there would be a lot of members of public bodies looking at it from a narrow point of view. Mr F. W. Greenslade said he saw no reason why that should be so. He thought that members were working for the district as a whole, and he for one was doing so and did not care if he went out to-morrow. He took it that members would only be jealous of the scheme from that standpoint—the good of the district. Mr Greenslade went on to say that at a meeting of local bodies held a year or two ago at which the subject of amalgamation was discussed, the general opinion at the end appeared to have been that each separate body could run its own district as economically as the proposed major body. The chairman (Mr A. Gould) said that it seemed desirable that members of local bodies should be given an opportunity of discussing the subject so that when the time came intelligent expressions on the point could be given. He had thus allowed the discussion. The Harbour Board, for instance, would be expected to make suggestions as to an easy and inexpensive method of dealing with matters purely connected with the Harboui Board arising from the proposal. As he had on previous occasions stated, the Nelson Harbour Board did not want to take any step interfering with the jurisdiction or smooth working of other shipping interests in the Nelson district. For the purposes of the amalgamation scheme which the Government was bringing in they, as a board, had to say what they thought, not what they were going to do. Mr H. W. Kelly said that he was a believef in the amalgamation proposal. In any reforms somebody or other had to suffer for the benefit of the majority. The whole district would be better off if there were less selfishness about.