THE Poverty Bay Independent. Published every Saturday morning. Saturday, June 6, 1885.

Poverty Bay Independent, Volume I, Issue 14, 6 June 1885, Page 2

THE Poverty Bay Independent. Published every Saturday morning. Saturday, June 6, 1885.

In a previous issue we called attention to the manner in which the Borough was being rapidly plunged into debt, and we again revert to the subject in order that the ratepayers may fully understand the position of affairs before deciding whether they will, under the present system of dispensing public monies amongst the “ family,” sanction the raising of another special loan before the last one has been cleared off. At present the concentrated powers of our civic legal serpentine acumen is being devoted to an endeavour to discover some loophole in the Act, or its amendments, whereby they can if possible dispense with the troublesome method of obtaining the ratepayers sanction. If such an attempt is really made we shall know how to meet it. On the 31st of March, 1883, the Borough income was set down at with a nominal overdraft of /"193- Now mark the rapid change I In the following two years, that is on March 31, 1885, the income had increased to X*5>476, and the overdraft had, instead of decreasing, increased to Z'2,035. Thus in two years, although our income had increased by the large sum of ,£3,599, our expenditure had increased by the enormous sum of £4,441. In spite of these palpable facts, and in spite of the Mayor’s recent assertion that there was barely £2OO to carry us through the year, and in spite of the assertion made by Councillor Townley to the effect that If the Council did not exercise more economy they (the councillors) might as well “ shut up shop,” they have recklessly voted /190 to be thrown away on the “bridge job.” Although we are not quite in a position to answer the oft repeated question of Where has the money gone to, involving as it doubtless would some most interesting disclosures, yet we may point to things which, like grains of sand, are so numerous as to go a long way towards making the ratepayers great hill of life. Scarcely one meeting takes place without some Councillor wanting either a drain filled in so that his brick cart or his buggy may take a shorter cut, or that the footpath, road, or something in front of his or his friend’s store, house or section, wants seeing to. Then we may point to the large sums of money paid for advertising—no less than £g 10s. having been paid at the last sitting of the Board for one advertisement which is only inserted once, in conformity with the Act, and which, if thrown open to competition, would not have cost £3. It is in such quietly managed little “ jobs ” as these that hundreds and hundreds of pounds are being frittered away, and the ratepayers robbed to support and lubricate the main pivot around

which rotate that “ring” of locusts who lick up the whole substance of the place, and who are ever on the watch to take honesty and fair dealing “ by the throatS In a short time hence the ratepayers will doubtless be asked to sanction a further attack upon their pockets, but before acquiescing, we ask them to consider a few of these facts, together with the action taken in the “ Turanganui Bridge job.”