The Daily News FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1929. DRAINAGE LOAN

Taranaki Daily News, 20 September 1929, Page 8

The Daily News FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1929. DRAINAGE LOAN

The New Plymouth Borough Council is acting wisely in holding a series of meetings and explaining to ratepayers the council’s proposals in regard to the suggested loan of £172,000 upon which a poll will be taken next week. So large an expenditure, adding, as it must, very considerably to the rates, must be thoroughly justifiable if the ratepayers’ consent is to be obtained. It may be said at once that the justification exists. The provision of adequate sanitary services is one of the essentials of a wellgoverned, well-equipped municipality. But for the fact that bound up with the provision of a sewerage system there was the question of an adequate water supply the drainage proposals would have been laid before ratepayers long ago. Unfortunately so comprehensive a scheme is bound to be costly, but against its cost must be set the healthier conditions it will bring about, and the added value this will give to property within the borough. Given the necessity for a scheme of drainage the first eo

sential is that it shall be comprehensive enough, not only to serve immediate needs, but those which may accrue within the next generation. It must be as economical as the nature of the undertaking will permit and, where property owners are called upon to face heavy initial expenditure, there should be means of assisting their finance. All these conditions are claimed for the scheme that is New Plymouth ratepayers. ’Members of the council are satisfied that the plans and estimates of the borough engineer (Mr. C. Clarke) may be relied upon, that the proposed scheme is adequate, and is as economical as circumstances will permit. In this opinion they are fortified by the views of the consulting engineer to whom the plans were referred, and by those of the official engineers who investigated the matter on behalf of the Local Government Loans Board. The board would not permit the raising of a loan unless it were satisfied with the proposals from an engineering point of view. The fact that it has approved the loan being submitted to ratepayers is the best proof of its satisfaction with the borough engineer’s plans and estimates. An unfortunate aspect of the matter is that the whole cost of the system must come out of the rates. There is little earning power in a sewerage system, except, perhaps, indirectly. An outbreak, say of typhoid, might easily cost more than the interest on the drainage loan, to say nothing of the depreciation in value of property held in a town where such a visitation by an epidemic takes place. Up to the present time, according to the figures supplied by the Mayor (Mr. H. V. S. Griffiths) at the first meeting in the council’s campaign, the non-reproductive portion of the borough’s debt amounts to £165,709. When the drainage loan (if approved) has been spent that portion will be more than doubled. The public debt of the borough will then be not far short of one million pounds, which is a fair responsibility for under four thousand ratepayers to share. So long as the greater portion of a municipality’s loans are for reproductive purposes the burden placed on the ratepayers is not increased but, on the contrary, may be actually lessened by the earnings of the services established. Had, for instance, the will of the ratepayers in regard to the loan for additional water and electrical supplies not been thwarted by the Local Bodies Loans’ Board, supported largely by the short-sight-ed action of interested parties in the borough, there is no doubt additional earnings would have been available to lessen the rate that must now be paid to instal and maintain a drainage system. That cost must now fall wholly upon the non-reproduetive debt of the borough and must be paid for by additional rates, amounting to a fourth of the present already substantial rates. However regrettable this may be the council has to take circumstances as they now exist, and it has shaped its proposals accordingly. The need for a sewerage system is beyond question, and ,/ith a full knowledge of this, well as of the cost, ratepayers should give the matter most earnest consideration.