ELECTRICITY POLL.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXI, 12 August 1921, Page 4

ELECTRICITY POLL.

THE £50,000 LOAN. (To the Editor). Si: - ,—Are we downhearted? No! The Mayor sayS “We are not on the rocks yet.” How near are we to them? Let the burgesses judge. Our overdraft limit is £2500. Before th® Council met on Wednesday night the Borough was overdrawn at the bank £l9OO and £3BO was passed at the meeting, making £2280. Of this amount £7OO is in tnticipation of the £2OOO sewage loan hoped for soon. The normal expenditure on the sewage scheme (otherwise the septic tank) seems to be £350 a month. At this rate the bank will be obliged to refuse to. honour the Borough Council’s chequed before a mont hhas passed. The tank has been reported on as a fine piece of work, but there is no report as to when expenditure on it is to cease. At the present rate, by the end of the year it will have cost another £l7OO. The Mayor says if the £2OOO (new) loan money is a long time in coming we may be in trouble. That is putting the position mildly. By the time the loan comes to light it will have disappeared like Mr Massey’s six million surplus and five' million loan. That, Mr Editor, is not Irish; it is the simple language of Waimate Borough Council. According to the Mayor, we shall be in quite a sound position if the £2OOO loan comes to hand soon. It will indeed have to be soon.

This letter is not a protest against expenditure on the sewerage scheme. We must see that scheme through, no matter what the ultimate cost may be, but "it is a protest against the Council’s habit of taking polls for power to borrow £50,000 for hydroelectric schemes there is no hope of getting Government sanction for. We are already in such a hole financially that it will take all the wit of the Council to straighten things out. The Minister of Public Works told even Auckland people the other day at Hamilton that in regard to hydroelectric schemes they must not think parochially but nationally. Of a number of very - promising projects one had been decided on for Auckland and as soon as money was available at a reasonable rate of interest it/would be gone on with —but not before. There is no hope of the Borough Council forbearing to take the poll on the 7th of next month; therefore it is the duty of every ratepayer to see that a loan of £50,000 is not incurred on the vote of a quarter of the voters as was done at Timaru lately. This letter is already too long so I must leave till another occasion a note on the burden of rates we shall have to carry if those interested for some' reason, in this heavy expenditure, achieve their aim.—-I am, etc., • BURGESS.