POWER SUPPLY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 May 1938, Page 7

POWER SUPPLY

EXTENSION INTO OUTER AREAS. (To the Editor.) Sir, —During the recent meeting in the Opera House, I stated that rates on non-user land were commonly struck, and appealed to Mr Jordan (who was sitting on the. platform) for confirmation. Mr Jordan’s reply was that no such rates had ever been struck in Masterton. The occasion for my remarks was the difficulty ot unanimity respecting community services in country districts, owing to absentee owners, native lands, Crown lands, trust estates, leaseholds and financially embarrassed owners. The matter is of considerable importance to this community in respect to electric power in country districts where there is little or no prospect of applying ordinary democratic sanction for loans by way of poll. I would be glad if Mr Jordan would reply to the following questions with as straightforward an answer as he gave at the meeting. (1) When water and drainage services were first introduced to Masterton, was the rating on the capital or on the unimproved valuation? (2) If today I have a vacant section in Masterton, without water or drainage, adjoining a similar one which is occupied by a building and enjoying water and drainage facilities, do I pay equal rates on both, the unimproved valuation being the same? (3) If this is so. will Mr Jordan state the difference in principle between this and the non-users’ rate I advocated?

The country areas surrounding Masterton are its commercial life blood. The people are our people and they shared with us in finding the money making this national electrical enterprise possible. It has been established in our own district with our own borrowed money, and is now sufficiently well established and profitable to make the prospect of supplementary rates remote. Surely it is not impossible for us to devise some method by which this community enterprise can be more widely distributed, for not one pole or length of wire from here to Arapuni will rot any quicker because of this slight additional load — Yours, etc., F. C. DANIELL. Maslerton, May 12.