COST OF ROADING

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17918, 24 October 1932, Page 7

COST OF ROADING

- MAKE USERS PAY MORE BLlf " BURDEN ON FARMERS |5 ; -‘ Challenging the contentions of the automobile clubs and motor associations, Mr. D It Hoggard, chairman of the Hutt County Council, expressed the opinion at a meeting of his council on Friday that motor-vehicle users were not carrying their share of the road bill. On Mr. Iloggard’s motion it was decided to forward a remit to the Counties’ Association urging the transference of a larger share or loading exponses lrom the ratepayer to the road user. The meeting had before it a remit for wIM Waiototara County Council sought support. The remit advocated au immediate reduction in the present land valuations and suggested that county councils should be empowered to classify lands into three groups—agricultural, dairying and lamb fattening; store lamb and cattle country; and dry sheep country. With this classification effected it was suggested that the counties should then be authorised to reduce the valuations by various degrees. . Mr. Hoggard said he did not think revaluation would achieve much. A neighboring county had spent £7OO on a revaluation, and the sum might have been better spent on roads. Rating relief to the farmer could only be achieved by transferring a larger share of road upkeep on to the shoulders of road users. The chairman added that although motor taxation for 1930-31 had yielded £2,018,813, the maintenance, interest, and sinking fund charges on roads had totalled £6,061,938.

; “In this country three-quarters of the ixiads receive no subsidy from the petrol tax, and the other fourth is only in part maintained by the motorists, said 2k Hoggard. “In this struggle for survival we are ham-stringing our farmeis with oppressive rates aud other costs, and if it is our farmers and not their competitors who Jose in the struggle, then God help New Zealand,” he concluded.