PETITION TO BE CIRCULATED

Southland Times, Issue 22948, 22 July 1936, Page 6

PETITION TO BE CIRCULATED

GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF POWER SCHEME

RATEPAYERS’ DECISION

Members of the deputation which waited on the Southland Power Board yesterday morning to ask that a referendum of ratepayers be taken on the proposal to sell the board’s assets to the Government met yesterday afternoon and unanimously passed a resolution that a petition be drawn up and circulated in the Southland Power Board district asking the Government to take over the scheme. Mr H. J. Farrant was elected chairman of the meeting. Mr Farrant said that so far as the members of the deputation were aware, the Power Board had referred their representations to the finance committee of the board. This meant delay—perhaps so much delay as to enable the Minister of Finance to be out of New Zealand before a decision was reached. “I feel that the meeting should proceed at once to draw up and circulate a petition,” added Mr Farrant. “The Power Board’s attitude was virtually an answer of ‘No.’ ” Mr D. Cody said that the board’s attitude that ’day was consistent with its determination not to permit a referendum to be taken. Ratepayers should make sure that a petition would be drawn up. Mr Farrant agreed. He said that the first aim of ratepayers was to get rid of the rate and the meter rent. The Government had said that if its offer had been accepted the rate struck this year would not De collected. In rebuttal of this the board had passed the famous resolution they had heard that morning. This was to take £lO,OOO from the accumulated funds and to borrow £lO,OOO this year to save collecting a rate. There was still another £3OOO not accounted for, but with the Power Board this trifling sum did not matter. In the following year the board would have to borrow £20,000 (or £23,000) plus the interest on the £lO,OOO previously borrowed. The third year it would have to borrow still more than £23,000, for there would be interest on the sums previously borrowed. Eventually, if the debt were paid, it would have to be paid out of rates. “The argument about the board providing a legacy is all bunkum,” continued Mr Farrant. “We don’t know what the developments in electricity will be in the next forty or fifty years.” “Only the other day there was an announcement that power could be transmitted through the air without wires,” said Mr J. Cowie (Balfour).

“We should not hesitate to go on with the petition,” said Mr Farrant. Mr P. Cody said that another very obvious thing that must occur to the meeting was that a fortnight or so ago the Power Board had struck a rate of one halfpenny in the pound on the unimproved value; that day it had rescinded that motion and decided that there should be no rate. The board had agreed to a referendum and had then gone back on it. Those changes in the minds of the board members created an atmosphere of suspicion and warranted the ratepayers taking a < hand themselves in the matter. The motion was carried lyA sub-committee consisting of Messrs H. J. Farrant (chairman), R. P. Meek (provisional secretary), J. W. Smith, D. Cody, P. Cody and A. H. Mackrell, with power to add, was set up to arrange details in the preparation and the circulation of the petition. Mr W. G. Tait was appointed solicitor to the committee.