VALUATIONS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2606, 14 September 1909, Page 7

VALUATIONS.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —I have read your leading articles on this subject, and also letters appertaining to the same that have appeared in your columns. I should like to endorse the opinion of “A Settler” in your issue of the Ist inst., that the thanks of the public are due to you, with the additional hope that the man on the land, who is more particularly concerned, will show his practical appreciation of your efforts on his behalf by giving his support to the paper which supports him. “A Settler’ ’ states (among other things) that farmers take their gruel lying down, but as the Assessment Court has been constituted previously the chances of being able to obtain a reduction in the. amount of valuation were all against the objector. The only tiling that he was certain of was that he would be put to considerable expense. Take the case of Peter Wright, who, with his witnesses, travelled about one hundred miles to get redress from a gross imposition. It is satisfactory to know that he got his reduction, and was rewarded for his pluck, in sticking to his guns when he might, like many others, have settled his case on the basis of a few shillings reduction in his valuation. With the advent of practical men as assessors on the Bench to assist the S.M. in ooming to a decision . there is a hope for the farmer who considers himself overvalued to get redress, but other reforms are necessary. Firstly, there is a need of practical men as valuers, men who have had sufficient experience to he able, to put a value on property without taking the opinion of any irresponsible person as appears to have been done in Peter Wright’s case. In the course of a year or two there should be no difficulty in supplying this need. By that time some of the retrenched civil-servants, who have been “settled” on fifty or one hundred acres of bush land, will be looking for billets, and from the experience they have gained, will be able to estimate the value of a rough piece of bush country to a fraction of a penny. These are the men wanted for valuers. Secondly, the onus of proof of value of land should be put upon the valuer, and not as at present, upon the objector. Thirdly, in the event of a valuer not sustaining his valuation the Court should have power to grant costs to the objector, to the extent, as least, of his travelling expenses. There is no doubht that the country is considerably overvalued. Whether it is that the Government has to show sufficient assets to the British money-lender to enable it to get another loan, or whether the frequent- repetition of poor Tom Bracken’s “God’s Own Country” has induced the neople to accept it as fact, we don’t know; but we know that £2 and upwards per acre, unimproved value for mountainous forest country, inaccesssible for six months in the year, is absurd. I am,etc., “COCKATOO.”