LOCAL BODIES.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15308, 5 June 1922, Page 5

LOCAL BODIES.

| FINANCIAL PROBLEM, ANTECEDENT LIABILITIES. In a letter to the Morrinsville Borough Council recently the Prime Minister wrote: “I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the Ist inst., stating that the Morrinsville Borough Council supports the resolution passed by the Pahiatua Borough Council asking the Government to apportion a part of the loan being raised on the London market for payment of local bodies’ antecedent liabilities. In reply I have to inform you that the question as to whether the Government will set aside portion of the loan recently raised in London for the purpose of paying off antecedent liabilities of local bodies has already received careful attention, and it has been decided that & is impossible for the Government to arrange . for the repayment of the total indebtedness of all local bodies’ by means of a State-raised loan. As a matter of fact the five million loan recently raised has wholly been allotted for specific purposes, and would in any case be far from sufficient to meet the liabilities of local bodies in this respect. The Government is always willing to help local bodies and I am prepared to give favourably consideration to all implications for permission to borrow the various amounts required at a reasonable of interest. Several local bodies have already commenced to make 'their own arrangements for liquidating the antecedent liabilices, and it seems tome that your Borough Council ought to have no difficulty in proceeding to do the same. Under the new legislation each local authority is now in a position to offer the security of a special rate for •a special loan to repay money borrowed by way of overdraft.”