COUNTY ADMINISTRATION.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 3, Issue 723, 22 March 1881, Page 2

COUNTY ADMINISTRATION.

[To the Editor of the Wairarapa Daily.] Sir,—No good purpose w.ould be served by a lengthy reply from me to Mr Buchanan's last letter. I havo already shown in detail how the whole County Fund has been expended. 'Mr Buchanan's whole oase appears to be founded on the assumption that each district has a claim to what he calls its " rate subsidies," a principle which the Council would certainly never admit. Iu this, as you have very properly pointed out, lies the difference between a Road Board and a County point of view. Where there is such a difference of opinion as to principles of action, to discuss figures is useless. I gave the total expenditure in detail, so as to avoid all debatable questions, and Mr Buchanan has not pointed out the items which form the maladministration he complains of. He has adopted your argument that a largo portion of Council oxponses should be charged to works in the Forty-Mile Bnsh. This, however, is quite a fallacy, as each special vote has been debited with all expenses it involved. The only amounts not so charged are those which could only have been very slightly reduced, if at all, if no such work had beeu undertaken, lam quite willing to admit that the working expenses of the Council appear heavy, but experience has led to great retrenchment under this head, and if the Council >work is to be done at all it could hardly he done at less cost than at present, The resolutions of the Masterton Highway Board which Mr Buchanan quote prove that I was quite right in saying there had been a "'singular and uuaccountahlo misunderstanding." Iwasuot present at the meeting of 13th May last, when they were laid before the Council, and never saw them till'now. What the circumstances were which would make it impossible for me to forget them I therefore cannot guess. Had" I been there I would certainly have pointed ont to the Board that in asking the Council to sanction the payments they asked out of the vote they were asking an impossibility. To have done so would have involved a breach of agreement, under which I am personally responsible, and whioh would quite prevent any such use of the money;

lam, <Ssc, C. Pharazyn,