A PLEA FOR PRUDENCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Volume 59, Issue 38, 17 March 1930, Page 8

A PLEA FOR PRUDENCE.

H. LATHAM,

(To the Editor.) Sir, — I regret having made the chairman of the Napier Harbour Board wrathful by asking for information of interest to ratepayers, but must thank liim for sending me (1) a copy of the statement made to the recent Royal Commission showing the expenditure on the inner harbour embankment 1o he £84,348 14s lOd, and (2) statements of account of the board for the years ended September 1928 and 1929. The latter show the embankment was built ont of the £250,000 loan (which ratepayers fondly believed would bring overseas vessels into the inner har^ bour) authorised by Act in 1914 and. amendment in 1920." The rates of interest in this loan vary— 5i, 6£ and 7 per cent (£40,000 at the latter rate). The statements of accounts do not show in wliat years moneys were spent on the embankment, nor what proportions were at the different rates, so it is impossihle for me to ascertain the exact amount of interest _ ineurred. Hence I am reduced to availing myseif of tlie chairman' s permission to work it out at any old rate I like, and he content with making an estimate. Should this- estimate be wrong perhaps the chairman will give the correct figures as I originally asked for. I take it that the whole of the expenditure on the embankment has been, and is, unproductive and was entirely unnecessary (the Railway Department would have built the embankment at its own eost on the original site), _so it is a fair thing to compound the interest. On this basis the ratepayers must have been let in for a sum approaching £175,000. Surely another £47,000 of experimental expenditure is- not going to be added on to this ? It is useless expenditure like the above which almost justifies the Wellington centralisers in pushing the intensive offensive which they will launch at an early date to kill Napier overseas shipping. Had such sums as the above been spent on the Breakwater they would have been reproductive, they would have saved shippers hundreds of t-housands of pounds in lighterage in recent years, and would also have elimininated the harmful handling of ineat and cargo - shipped in the roadstead in consequence of loading and discharging in an open and unprotected position. With prudent development of the Breakwater and the great potential value of the board' s assets, Napier ihight have been a free, active port by now and could have defied Wellington or any other place, instead of the stagnation we have had so long under the present regime.— I am, etc.,

Greenmeadows, March 15, 1930.