STEWART ISLAND RATES
Sir,—The Stewart Island County Council certainly dropped a bomb on the ratepayers last week with a demand for a small rise of 50 per cent, from 8d in the £to 1/- in the £. Our last chairman, Mr T. Widdowson, during his term of office, paid off an ovedraft of £2OO and reduced the rates from 8d in the £ to 6d in the £, anl left the roads and footpaths in a first-class condition. Now they are in a deplorable state. Tourist tracks and roads are overgrown with scrub and rushes, footpaths are mud and pools of water. Nobody objects to the hospital rates; we at least get some returns for our money. What about the surplus? It goes to pay our chairman £52 a year and the clerk’s salary of £3OO a year. That amounts to £352, and rates collected are £450 from approximately 90 ratepayers. How can Stewart Island progress under these conditions? We have now a first-class ferry service, and it is up to the ratepayers of the island to call a public meeting and protest against these conditions. RATEPAYER.
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Bibliographic details
Southland Times, Issue 25737, 30 July 1945, Page 6
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184STEWART ISLAND RATES Southland Times, Issue 25737, 30 July 1945, Page 6
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