A COUNTY PROBLEM

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19027, 29 May 1936, Page 14

A COUNTY PROBLEM

COLLECTION OF KATES NATIVE AND CROWN LANDS /Herald Correspondent.) The new member for the Waikaremoana riding oi the Wairoa County Council, Mr.. D. V. Thomas, though he had bad as yet few opportunities, created a good impression at Wednesday’s meeting. To the Herald 1 reporter he explained himself as astonished at the largo amount of money handled by the council and its staff. At the close of the meeting 'lie quickly picked up the seeming injustice of granting rebates of rates to Maoris in order to secure a “clean up” of ancient debts which the state of the law had made irrecoverable. This matter has been somewhat of a nightmare to the council for a numbei oi years, and while the local body was preoared to sacrifice something to get a settlement, the council generally got an undertaking that there should be no “second cuts,” but that in future the rates would be kept up, and! so the interests of the ratepayers were preserved. . The indications are that with the placing of the Maoris on the same footing as regards wages, and the encouragement given them to develop then idle land's, this same “native question will soon be altogether eliminated’. This and the question of the Crown tenants being able to escape rate burdens as well as the five-year bar to recovery of debts to the local bodies by farmers who came under the protection of the last Government’s mortgage relief legislation, have proved serious handicaps to the county, and when this “Old man of the Sea” has been decently interred the Wairoa County Council should begin to show a vast improvement in its financial standing, good, even as it stands, undei such harassing conditions.