RATING ON THE UNIMPROVED VALUE

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4307, 16 March 1901, Page 4

RATING ON THE UNIMPROVED VALUE

Rating on the unimproved value is probably not a relic of barbarism, but the survival of an age in which ok! towns, full to their limit, and built over in every available corner, had to find' fi basis of income. These were the days when towns wore small, and walled in. The need for income was based on the need for defence against the predatory baron or the prowling monarch. A citizen of such, a town was rated a wording to his property, and having no occasion to do any more building, a tiling about which all were on the same footing, grumbled not at anything except the fact - that ho hail to pay at ail. The towns of our time, especially in this new country of ours, arc on quite a different footing. They are larger than will suffice for present wants, and they are not by any means full, neither arc they void of empty spaces. In all respects but one they are unlike those quaint, old, completes cities of the past. The point of resemblance is the important one of rating. The improvements placed by the citizens on their property are the basis of rating in both. The idle man, the absentee vagabond who. toils not, neither does he spin, net only puts notiling into the common fund, but, under tEe existing system, is presented every year with value added to his property by the industrious people who make their homes or headquarters within the city boundary, making their race respectable, helping to build up a new country, carrying' out all the highest duties of man. These on their side are penalised for their virtues. The more virtuous they are the more they are -punished. Industry in their case brings its own punishment. In the beginning of- colonising, people who built towns fell'back-without reflection on the old system of rating; and now that people have got tangled up in it they seetm unable to exorcise reflection enough to prevent the bees of the community from making the fortunes of the 1 drones.

That is probably the reason why, since the optional Act was passed for adopting the unimproved value as the basis of rating, so few boroughs have taken advantage'of it. The hulk of the municipal world has not yet discovered that industry is not a crime. But the majority of those who have made that discovery have found that the consequences are distinctly good- The only hope for the true principle lies in the voluntary spread of the only fair system of rating. Nothing succeeds like success. When, the success of the unimproved value makes the ratepayers who are not punished for industry and enterprise hulk large,-the old system will bo within measurable distance of being swept away. The true principle is that the man who has no other property than a valuable section must pay more for his city -privileges than the man who, by bis labour and enterprise, has made that section' reliable. If a man will do nothing for the city which makes him rich, he must he made to choose between coming bad: to do his share cf pushing the civic chariot and paying a heavy fine for idle exemption-