A MUNICIPAL SURVEY.

Wairarapa Age, 7 April 1933, Page 4

A MUNICIPAL SURVEY.

ADDRESS BY THE MAT3R AT THE ROTARY CLUB. GAS DEPARTMENT & STREET IMPROVEMENTS. NOTABLE An interesting and informative survey of the affairs of the town of Masterton as they have developed and have been handled during the past eight years was given by the Mayor, in an address to the Rotary Club yesterday. Mr. S. L. P. Free (president) occupied the chair and visitors of the day included Messrs K. J. Caverhill, District Public Trustee, and V. E. Donald. Introducing Mr. Jordan, Mr. I-’ree said it might seem strange to introduce the best-known man in Masterton. Rotary had no political opinions, but it urged upon its members to make themselves acquainted with all that might be necessary to enable them to take an intelligent interest in the politics both of their community and of their country. They knew that no man in Masterton had a better knowledge of municipal affairs than Mr. Jordan Mr. Jordan said he was not going to < talk politics—there must be some misunderstanding. He proposed to say something about the affairs of this town during the past eight years. He took office in 1925 and the club’s "Charlie” (Councillor H. M. Peacock) entered the council at the same time. Not long before that date, the Local Bodies Finance Act was placed on the Statute Book at the instance of Sir Francis Bell. This measure, which was long overdue, required local bodies to live within their income. When the Act came into force, this borough floated a loan, in 1924, to- get rid of a liability of £14,900 to the bank. At the election in 1925, some loan proposals had been submitted to the ratepayers and had been approved. A loan of £12,750 was authorised to cover the cost of water reticulation in the South Ward. About seven miles of three inch mains in the town were replaced with a view to providing an adequate supply of water for those who used hoses and still more to provide an adequate fire-fighting supply for the brigade. The insurance companies had agreed to bring down their rates when this work was done and the rates were brought down. LANSDOWNE’S ENTRY. In 1923, Lansdowne had becoma part of the borough. It came in' as a separate ward because drainage and a water supply had to be provided and quite a lot of people thonght the Lansdowne people ought to provide these. things for themselves. Accordingly, £9,990' was borrowed for water and' £16,000 for drainage, £26,000 in all. This was an enormous load for a small community. It: was equivalent to a. loan of about a quarter of a million on the whole town. The loan charges doubled the Lansdowne rates. A few months before he took office, Mr. Jordan added, the Lansdowne dam. broke loose. That caused moie trouble. They had to find an immediate water supply to meet requirements until a< loan proposal’could be put through. A sum of £1,500 was raised and a ten . inch main was taken in from Pownall Street to the top of the hilL The town , was then involved in some litigation and he had heard it said at the time that the lawyer Mayor was going to make jobs for other lawyers. Might hesay that they had not been involved in any litigation in Court in the period: in which he had held office. They were threatened with some litigation over flood claims. The only other threat of litigation that he could think of was that arising out of a gas explosion in Queen Street. The lawyers had not got touch work out of the lawyer Mayor. Having put water and drainage Inta Lansdowne, they also had some trimiWng up with the County Council on the question of roads. That was all very satisfactorily arranged. The old order then changed and Lansdowne became part of the town. There was at the time a good deal of faction and of talking and writing about the condition of affairs. Some people said: “The Mayor comes from Lansdowne and Lansdowne is getting this.” When it eame to a settlement, however, the South Ward had something to pay ta the North Ward.

GAS DEPARTMENT FINANCE. At the 1925 election, the electors gave authority to raise a loan of £6,000 for gas purposes. The loan was raisied. Some £2,000 was to be for the trading account. They found that this was not required. A sum of £l,OOO was paid straight back into the sinking fund and the other £l,OOO had been paid off since. "When he took office, Mr. Jordan observed, there was no reserve in the Gas Account. One of his early experiences was that the council had to find a sum of £l,lOO to meet the cost of sheathing the gas-holder in Bannister Street. The council previously had paid out £3,500 to consumers and had built up no reserve. They had since built up a reserve of £3,000 and knocked the price of gas down too. At present, the reserve stood at £2,500, as it had been drawn upon to pay off a small loan of £7OO falling due. In 1928, legislation was passed requiring gas undertakings to establish depreciation funds. At the present time, Masterton’s renewal and depreciation fund, built up under this legislation, amounted to over £2,300. In addition, the undertaking had a sum of nearly £l5OO cash in the bank. The gas undertaking was established over forty years ago and for over 30 years they had no State regulation at all. Then camo extravagant expenditure on electrical works and they were faced by an electrical competitor specially favoured by the State. Under hampering and restricting regulations, they had been required in the course of four years to spend £7OO on what he called gadgets that were not of the smallest use. Mr. Jordan declared himself of opinion that the regulations relating to the thermal quality of gas etc., while they had involved a considerable amount of expenditure, had not conferred a pennyworth of benefit on the community. TRAFFIC LICENSING. When he took office, he added, motor traffic was becoming a very important factor in the borough. A traffic tally taken at the south end of the town between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on November 26, 1930, showed that 1009 vehicles passed—sll outward and 498 inward. At the north end, on December 3, 1930, the number of vehicles passing between the same hours was 605 outward and 655 inward, 1260 in all. “ Some of us used to think,*” Mr. Jordan observed reminiscently, “that rubber-tired vehicles did not affect the roads.” In 1925, he added, the Government decided that heavy vehicles, of two tons and over, should be licensed. Masterton appointed an inspector of heavy traffic—the only one at the time in fifteen local body areas. He was hired out on occasion to other local bodies, and eventually their next-door neighbours agreed to go halves. Heavy traffic fees collected in the No. 12 district in .1925 amounted to £2735, and in 1931 to £5807. That was approximately what had happened throughout the Dominion. Heavy traffic fees had gone up 100 per cent, in five years. Speaking of the distribution of the fees, Mr. Jordan said that Masterton was at first offered no more than Martinborough and Eketahuna. In the end, it got as much as all the oth'er boroughs in the district put together. Some time ago, Eketahuna objected to the allocation, but was shown to be getting more than it -was entitled to. The smaller boroughs then changed their tune and said, “We are hard up. What about giving us a 1 handf” Masterton then gave up one-fifth of its allocation to the smaller boroughs. In this district a certain amount of difficulty arose out of the fact that Masterton was the only borough with a population of more than 6000. It was thus not able to draw on the Highways Fund, as were all boroughs with a population of less than 6000. Simultaneously with the heavy traffic licences, drivers’ licences, with a fee of ss, were introduced. Most of the receipts from this source also went on to the roads. THE PETROL TAX. The petrol tax came into operation in 1928 and eight per cent, of the receipts was allocated to boroughs with populations of 6000 or over. The other 92 per cent, went to the Highways Fund, for the benefit of the counties and smaller towns. It was represented to the late Sir Joseph Ward that eight per cent, of the petrol tax was not enough for towns of 6000 and over. These contained roughly two-fifths of the population of the Dominion—about 600,000—and the ratio of traffic was found to be approximately the square of the population. Sir Joseph Ward’s reply, which he had never forgotten was: “Yes, you have the population; nave you got the voting power?” That was all there was to it. The eight p-er cent, of the petrol tax to cities and the larger boroughs amounted to what the late chief of the Public Works Department called, “Two bob a knob.” The first increase in petrol tax increased Masterton’s share from £BOO to £l2OO. A further addition had been made, not for the purpose of assisting local bodies, but to <aise revenue for the Consolidated Fund. STREET IMPROVEMENTS. ‘Speaking of street works, Mr. Jordan said that when he took office in 1925, they set to work on a definite scheme for removing heavy maintenance charges due to increasing traffic, and for removing also the dust menace, they started surfacing the streets on w nidi maintenance charges were heaviest, gradually working to others. The average length of streets surfaced during the past 8 years had 'been two miles a year. The average expenditure on streets, including footpaths and kerbing s/!/' the past cl S !lt y ear s> had been 19000 a year and the whole of this work had been done out of revenue Before taking office, he had heard it said by a past chairman of the Works Committee that they should go for a loan of £lO,OOO and do the streets, they had spent more than £40,000 without raising any loan. He had sometimes wondered whether it had been right to do all this work out of revenue. Those who now came along and bought property w-ould not be paving their full share of the cost of streets. That, however, was onlv an academic question. There had" been some complaints from the outer areas about footpaths and kerbing. A man who bought a section cheap because it had not services was not entitled, however, to demand a full range of ser-

vices, as soon, as his purchase was macle. On the subject of open spaces, Mr. Jordan observed that some years ago the council had bought South Park “out of spare cash at the end of the year.” Upkeep of this area had cost so far less than £5O a year. The park was an air space where it was needed, I to keep children off the traffic route. The Mayor mentioned also the acquisition of the Horse Paddock and of the area needed to remove the bottle neck from Worksop Road. LOANS AND RATES.

In 1925, the borough’s total loan indebtedness was £205,000. At present, it was £228,000. Taking off the amount of the Lansdowne water and drainage 10an—£27,400, with a sinking fund of £lsoo—the borough owed less than it did in 1925. The amount of the general rate in 1925 was £13,400, and in 1933 the corresponding amount was £ll,OOO. They had kept their full staff employed during the last four years of unemployment and had not used unemployed labour to do staff work. They had reduced the wages of men getting £4 a week or less by Id per hour, and the wages of those getting over £4 a week by lid an hour. (Applause.) On the motion of Mr. C. M. Bowden Mr.. Jordan was accorded a very hearty vote of thanks for his address. Mr. Bowden observed that Mr. Jordan’s record and that of the successive councils with which he had served was very satisfactory. It was a matter for congratulation that Mr. Jordan haa accepted nomination for a further term of office.