ROAD BOARD ELECTIONS.

Opunake Times, Volume II, Issue 95, 31 May 1895, Page 3

ROAD BOARD ELECTIONS.

(to the editor.) * Sir, —ln your leader of the 21th instant you quote a section of the

Road Board Act re qualifications upo i which a ratepayer can exercise one or morevotfs. Quite right; and if you will giant “ that on the vote si given he is rated,” you have the whole question s 'tiled. Non-payment of rates due are not the rates which may be due on the usw valuation roll. At any election, except the triennial one, your argument would apply. For instance ; A wants to vole ; he is valued on old roll at £9OO (one vote), and owes one year's rates ; on the new roll he is valued at £I2OO (two votes). He pays due rates on £9OO, and Ins two votes at the.election by virtue of his qualification, and by (hat voting power he is legally rated. Five weeks before the election all objections to the new valuation were finally settled, and I much question whether, under the .circumstances, the Road Board can use one roll for election purposes, and another roll, much increased in value, for rating purposes. Simply because the gentlemen who receive the ratepayers’ money to do certain duties fail to perform them. No election should have been held, there being only seven qualified candidates. One election has been held, and yet another one to come—a pure w'aste of money, which could have been avoided. —I am, &c., / W. J. Wells. Pimiho, Maj 27, 1895.