Untitled

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1200, 20 February 1880, Page 2

Yerv few ratepayers are aware that there is every prospect of the Municipal Council striking a special water rate tli!3 year. From the minutes read at the meeting of the Cottueil last evening we learned that at a special nueting held' the other day to consider financial matters, a motion was tabled to levy a special water rnte of Is 3d in the £, but consideration wa3 postponed nntil List night. The question was, however, postponed for a few days, pending the ■ coming into force of the new assessment roll, his Worship the Mayor pointing out that should the C'ou.icil at once decide to strike the rate it would have to be collected under the rate roll for the expiring year. This would, he explained, entail a consider- ! ahle amount of expense and extra labor, and the same courae would have to bo followed |in succeeding years. For this reason, and j not because the Council were anxious to I .stave off* the evil day, was the levying of a I social rate postponed. Few who know the j tmaucial position of the Corporation i will care to deny that the rate jis necessary, and none will dispute the fact that the burthen, though heavy, is but the natural sequence of the extensive and expensive water supply schemu that the town has entered upon. The interest and linking hind in connection with the loan for I water supply purposes must be met, and the Council sec no other means of nu-eting these and the Corporation's other engagements than by imposing fresh burdens upon the ratepayers. It i 3, however, satifactory to leani, as we did from casual remarks made at the meeting laat evening, that there is some prospect of the general irate being reduced to some slight extent, but there is a certainty that the rates for the year will not be less "than 2s in the £, while they may ninotmt to something more than that.