View report page

59
Vestry were able to record a small reduction in the amount
of the demand made by the Board for their purposes, and
when making the rates in March of 1889 the Vestry were
led by a further reduction in the amount of the precept
for the first half-year to determine upon a rate of 8d. in
the £, being a penny less than the rate levied during the
two previous years. The decrease, however, proved to be
illusive. In October, the Finance Committee had to report
that the amount of the precept for the second half of the
year was £13,563 6s. 5d., exceeding by £1,595 2s. 7d. that
of the first half-year, upon which the General Rate for
School Board purposes had been estimated. As that rate
was barely sufficient to produce the amount for the year
on the basis of the demand for the first six months, the
Committee were naturally apprehensive of great inconvenience
arising from the insufficiency of the rate before
the financial year closed—an inconvenience only avoidable,
if the precepts were to be met at the required times, by a
resort to the expensive expedient of a Supplementary Rate.
The Committee declined, however, to submit such a proposal
to the Vestry; and the School Board were plainly
told that so long as they systematically ignored the reasonable
convenience of the rating authorities in imposing,
without any previous notice, an increase equivalent to more
than a half-penny in the £, and while they continued to
disregard the representations repeatedly made by such
authorities of the impossibility of collecting the amounts
required to pay the instalments at the dates named in their
precepts, the Board would have to submit to the resulting
inconvenience being brought home to them by waiting for
the payment of the instalments until the rates for the purpose
had been collected. And the Vestry did more than
give verbal expression to their opinion. When on the 20th
February the solicitors of the School Board wrote pressing
for payment of the £6,781 13s. 3d. instalment due on the