ASSESSMENT COURT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25792, 13 March 1945, Page 6

ASSESSMENT COURT

VALUATION FOR RATES HEARING OF OBJECTIONS The Assessment Court for the, Dunedin district held a sitting yesterday to hear objections to city rating valuations for the year 1945-46. Mr J. R. Bartholomew, S.M., presided. Altogether 82 objections under the Rating Act, 1925, had been set down for hearing, but 80 of these were either withdrawn or struck out yesterday, leaving only two cases for consideration. “It is notoriously difficult to arrive at a valuation in connection with properties such as this,” the magistrate remarked, when sustaining an objection lodged by James Begg, for whom Mr H. S. Adams appeared. The objector claimed that the status of his property in Ross street did not warrant the increase in rateable valuation from £284 to £312 for the ensuing year. Mr A: C. Robertson appeared foj the City Corporation. “ This property has been valued for rating purposes at £284 since 1940,” Mr Bartholomew said in his summing up, after the evidence had been heard. “ Mr A. P. Lindsay, of the City Council Valuation Department, has stated that the increase is warranted by reason of the sale of one property in the neighbourhood. It is notoriously unsafe to arrive at a generalisation from one such sale. There is room for a great deal of difference of opinion in arriving at the valuation of a property like thus. It would require a considerable amount of corroborative evidence before the grounds for the suggested increase could be accepted. I must rule, therefore, that the rateable valuation be reduced from £312 to the former amount of £284.”

The second case was one in which Dorothy Helen Greene, through her husband, Ralph Ernest Greene, objected to the rateable valuation of a property in Bowler avenue being increased from £7B to £B4. Neither the objector nor her husbancj! was represented by counsel. The judge held that the grounds of the objection were not adequate. The valuation was accordingly sustained.