RATING ON BOWLING GREENS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25672, 21 October 1944, Page 9

RATING ON BOWLING GREENS

Sir,—At the last meeting of the Dunedin City Council the request of a deputation from , the Otago Council of Sport for a remission in part of the rates paid on bowling greens was declined on the recommendation of the Finance Committee. Presenting a report of the committee, Councillor W. B. Taverner made several remarks on which we desire to comment. 1. Councillor Taverner stated that a total of £762 a year was collected in rates from sporting organisations in Dunedin. The remission of 50 per cent, of these rates, amounting to £3BO, would affect the rates payable by other ratepayers to the extent of a small decimal of a penny in the £, and this would not be the heavy burden which Councillor Taverner alleges. The remission of this sum, which would amount to a subsidy by the City Council to sporting bodies, would be a comparatively small donation from the City Corporation to those bodies which, at no profit to themselves, but with a great deal of work, maintain recreation reservations and sporting areas for their members for which

the council has no other responsibility. The City Council is prepared to point with justifiable pride to the recreation and sporting areas available so readily in this city to the residents, but is apparently not prepared to conti'ibute towards the enterprise and hard work of the men and women who keep the organisations concerned on the border line of existence. 2. Councillor Taverner points out that the Otago Golf Club pays £l7O a year in rates. This is just a little over four times the amount paid by one bowling club in the city area with a tiny fraction of the area owned by the Otago Golf Club.

3. Another argument against the remission raised by Councillor Taverner was the fact that the Otago Rugby Football Union pays £l6B in rates. The Rugby Football union exercises its power to charge for admission to matches held on the Carisbrook ground and has ample sources of revenue to meet its liabilities for rates. Bowling clubs do not charge and never have charged admission to the public to any of their fixtures, and It ts well known that the public is freely permitted access to all bowling clubs in the Dunedin Centre.

4. Supporting the chairman's remarks, Councillor McCrae is reported as having stated that as a bowler nimself he knew that the bowlers generally do not expect any rating remission. This is an extraordinary statement in view of the fact that the Dunedin Bowling Centre Itself sent a deputation to the City Council and later unanimously requested that the Council of Sport take action in the matter. There are one or two matters which Councillor Taverner did not mention in his report to the council that should in fairness be brought to the public, notice: (1) At least two of the neighbouring local bodies, viz., the St. Kilda Borough Council and the Peninsula County Council have seen fit to make a 50 per cent, remission in rates to bowling clubs within their jurisdiction. (2) On the occasion of the 1 recent New Zealand championship tournament held at Dunedin a vast number of visiting bowlers and their relatives spent an estimated sum of £20,000 during their short stay in this city, a portion of which must have found its way into the coffers of the trading departments of the City Corporation. The New Zealand Bowling Association has been officially requested by the City Council to hold its next New Zealand championship tournament at Dunedin during our centennial year, 1948, when once again a large gathering will bring a substantial amount of revenue. On the figures supplied by Councillor Taverner, bowling clubs pay the City Corporation £126 in rates. A remission of half this sum would amount to £63. In view of tlie foregoing facts, is this a very big donation for a wealthy city like ours to make to assist recreation in which most of the participants are themselves ratepayers of the city and from which the corporation derives a substantial revenue in numerous forms in Its trading departments? Other cities, boroughs, and counties are only too willing to give tills small municipal subsidy to sporting bodies, and. in the opinion of the Council of Sport,, the arguments of the Finance Committee are, to say the least of them, very unconvincing.—l am, etc., R. S. M. Sinclair, Secretary, Otago Council of Sport. Dunedin, October 20.