BOROUGH AND COUNTY

Observer, Volume XXII, Issue 50, 30 August 1902, Page 2

BOROUGH AND COUNTY

" Here's a How'dye-do — Here's a Pretty Mess.

EVER since local self-government was granted to the people of Waihi, the relations of the new borough and the Ohinemuri County Council, from which it was disassociated, have been very interesting to contemplate. With its birth, Waihi inherited a bountiful gold duty revenue of £12,000 per annum which the County had formerly enjoyed. Needless to say, the County was angry as well as envious. In the first blush of its resentment it boycotted Waihi by allowing the main road, upon which the new borough depends for its communication with the outside world, to fall into a shocking state of disrepair. If Waihi wanted communication, it argued, the Borough must maintain the road, and, though Waihi was willing to contribute liberally, it was unable to make reasonable terms with the obdurate County.

The County was resolved not to lose that £12,000 gold revenue, and ignoring the fact that by every legal and moral right the money belonged to Waihi, it nevertheless planned and schemed to get a share of it. Now, by a blundersome award made by a self-sufficient clerk of the Audit Department, Waihi has suddenly been stripped of almost the whole of her

revenue. The birthright of Waihi has been taken away and given to the County, and while the Waiheathens are amazed and astonished at the palpable injustice of this transaction, the Paerufnans, at the County headquarters, have celebrated their triumph with illuminations and beating of drums. And well they might.

The story of this award has already been told in the local papers. Under the Municipal Corporations Act, it is provided that where a new borough is formed, a commission shall be set up to allot the proportion of County liabilities at date that the Borough shall take over. In this instance, the County has an overdraft, said to amount to £10,000, and the duty of Mr Easton, the auditor chosen to make the adjustment, was to determine the proportion of this overdraft that the County should pay. Here his authority ended. But Mr Easton is an enthusiastic type of Government official, with none of the tired feeling so characteristic of the red-tape class about him. The financial adjustment was a trivial matter to a man of his gigantic energies, and once on the job, he accomplished colossal results.

With a Hne disregard for the law, he gave the lion's share of gold duty to the County. Heaven alone knows by what authority he gives any part of the Waihi gold duty to the County. The existing law does not justify him in doing so, because it provides that the gold duty shall be the revenue of the local body in whose district it is raised. Certainly, at the Thames, the gold duty of the county and borough is divided, but that is because many of the mines there are partly within one boundary and partly within the other. But no part of the Waihi mine is within the Ohinemuri County. In any case, it was no part of Mr Easton s business to concern himself with the gold duty at all, and much less to take it from one local body and give it to another.

However, having with one stroke of his autocratic pen set aside the law, and given the County £7,000 of Waihi's £12,000 of gold duty, Mr Easton's generosity at other people's expense by no means ended. Observing that Waihi had still £5,000 left, and probably unable to understand what Waihi wanted with revenue at all, the whole-souled Easton ordered the Borough to pay £3,207 towards the cost of maintaining the main road. Previously, the County had argued that the Borough should either give up a share of the gold duty or maintain the main road. Mr Easton went a step further, and compelled the Borough to do both.

Even then, his energies were Hot exhausted. Ignoring the fact that Waihi had contributed to County revenue in the last five years £23,000 more than it had received back in the way of public works, he ordered the Borough to take over £1,497 of the County overdraft. Then, having stripped Waihi practically of the whole of its revenue, the autocratic gentleman decreed that Waihi might retain the rates raised within its boundary. This was superfluous, because the law already gives the Borough the rates, but Mr Easton was a power unto himself independent of the law, and, on the principle of assuming a virtue if you have it not, was evidently anxious to make some appearance of impartiality.

Waihi's position at the present moment is a delightfully unique one. It is practically a Borough without a ievenue. The population of the town is 5000, and the growth having been rapid, the access to the people's dwellings is practically along roughly formed tracks. There are roads to make, lighting and water to provide, sanitation to arrange for, and the hundred and one other services of a young town to be paid for, to say nothing of the salaries of the Borough officials. Where is the money to come from ? It cannot be raised by rating, because the tenure of the holdings is mining leasehold, and that doesn't return much in rates. Waihi is beggared in order that the County may revel in luxury. And this, too, at the caprice of a clerk in the Audit Department.

But it goes without saying that the award will be upset. It is too grossly absurd and too utterly contrary to existing law. Certainly, if there wan to be an unfair award, 'twere better from a Waihi point of view that it should be preposterously unfair, and in this respect Mr Easton has overreached himself. The monstrously one-sided character of the award will prove to be its own undoing. So far as Mr Easton is concerned, he is no doubt marvelling at his own cleverness. But how will the Government regard it : a Borough, stopped in its career of usefulness, and beggared by one stroke of a self-sufficient auditor's pen? So far as Waihi's feeling is concerned, there are no two opinions. With Shakespeare, the people there are inclined in their amazement to say:— " Man, vain man, Dressed in a little brief authority, Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven As make t lie angels weep."