COUNT'Y COUNCIL ELECTIONS

Thames Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 18486, 30 October 1917, Page 1

COUNTY COUNCIL ELECTIONS

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Your correspondent J. C. Miller, whose ' letter appeared. iii your issue of Monday, has skilfully waded the main and only point of the bona fide ratepayers' grievance. Our complaint is that votes have been given to people who are neither in equity or justice entitled to them, and all the red herrings .that can be drawn across the scent will not altar the fact. It is a gross injustice, and I trusti that those who pay rates will, by their votes, show theis* rasettitment. My object is not to turn east against west, and J. C. Miller knoiwa perfectly well by my letter of Saturday last that it is not. The statement is as misleading as his abatement that there are five or six hundred- pounds collectible this year 1 from the settlers on the west, the implication! of course being that this is to be paid by the Bouraki Plains settlers, and ninety-niino people out' of a hundred who read his letter coneider thtt he so-,m,ea.nt it. iTow the truth is that the Haui-aki settlers, the people who have been m unjustly given Votes to swamp vs 1, will not have to pay one sixpence of tkis five or six hundred pounds. It is to be paid by ratepayers outside of the H&uraki Plains area, by settlers wlio have been paying rates for years, the largest ratepayer Being 1 the owner of 'the Oronga block of isome two or three thousand aores. Mr Miller's sophistry cannot alter the broad fact that if an owner of property isi not liable to pay the' -geueral rate he has no right to a voice in the selection of a representative to spend our money. The granting! of votes to non-ratepayers is a scandal and a disgrace, and should be relented in the strongest manner possible. In respect to your correspondent "Grave Digger," I consider he should have got his say off from a «>ap box; it was too purile for 'publication.—l am, etc., BATEPAYEII.