SPECIAL DISTRICT NEWS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 1, Issue 10, 15 May 1912, Page 4

SPECIAL DISTRICT NEWS.

Onewhero. A correspondent writes : The paragraph on this district in a recent is'suo presents very interesting, not to stty, amusing, reading, to anyone acquainted with the circumstances and wants of the locality. The brilliant suggestion of a light railway as a cure-all for every existibg failure in the means of locomotion may he dismissed as quite as visionary as a suggested aeroplane seivioe. Neither dream would do away with the necessity for useable roads, as every farmer could not be connected with' the creamery, the Waikato wharves, the railway station, or with the farmers in the riding, by a light railway, or even an aeroplane service. The visions indicated may he of service fifty years hence ; in the meantime the residents want to get about without plugging through seas of mud, which is the correct description of the present apologies for roads. The district has suffered far too long from the visionary enthusiasm of those in authoritvpromoting wild cat schemes of road diversion, creamery sites, and fantastic loans, while utterly neglecting the much more commonplace duty of keeping the existing roads decently fit tor traffic. Your article refers to a £4OOO loan being expended some years ago, and remarks that the result did not come up, to expectations, and the present Councillor then tried to float a loan of £IO,OOO (a £ for £ subsidy was never then mentioned) to complete a work which the £4OOO was intended to do. Naturally, the ratepayers rejected this barefaced attempt to hang a millstone round their necks, as they wer<i fully aware of how the bulk of the £4OOO loan had been squandered, owir.g to the employmeut of in-efficient men (for reasons which it is not necessaiy to mention) on the work. It is estimated that only 8s worth of work was obtained for each £1 expended; and as the modicum of work done was left unattended it has now practically disappeared, and the work of road construction in Onewhero will have to be commenced de novo, although the ratepayers will have to go on paying for the £4OOO loan for years to come. Now a fresh agitation has been started for authority to raise a £IO,OOO loan, this time conditionally on the Government granting a £ for £ subsidy, which is not at all likely to materialise as the Public Works Department are fully aware of the roadmaking methods of Onewhero. The Councillor in promoting this extravascheme lias the audacity to attempt to delude the ratepayers into believing that he can get "£IO,OOO on loan, which will cost the ratepayers nothing either now or in the future, sbut the ratepayers know too well that in this world y.»u can have nothing.'without paying for it. The present scheme, if it ever goes to a vote, will be rejected like the last because the ratepayers have no confidence in the existing management. "Of course a considerable sum is raised from the Onewhero riding every year in rates, but where and how the money is expended is a mystery to most people. Steps are being taken to solve this mystery. A committee of ratepayers is in process of formation with the object of securing if p issihle 20s worth of work for every £ 1 paid in rates, and bv this means having the worst places in the roads made good. For the larger scheme of contractors, which is of course necessary, the ratepayers will perforce have to wai* until thp Raglan County Council, with its inefficient and and hugger-muggering administration, in which no confidence is placed, disappears in the new and more eulightene 1 authority which will be set up by the proposed Local Government Bill."