Ratepayers meaning

We need to look at creative ways of using resources to provide ratepayers with the best possible service.

In 1898 also the municipal franchise, hitherto confined to ratepayers, was greatly widened; in 1900 the English system of compensation to workmen for accidents suffered in their trade was adopted with some changes, one of the chief being that contested claims are adjudicated upon cheaply and expeditiously by the same arbitration court that decides industrial disputes.

The Education Act of 1872 abolished the old management of the parish schools and provided for the creation of districts (burgh, parish or group of parishes) under the control of school boards, of which there are 972 in Scotland, elected every three years by the ratepayers, male and female.

The principle on which they are established may be briefly stated thus: towns with a minimum population of Boo can, on a poll demanded by the ratepayers showing a majority in favour of it, acquire the status of a police burgh subject to representations from neighbouring burghs, a proviso devised to check the growth of " parasitic " burghs in the immediate vicinity of a great centre of population and industry, enjoying all the public improvements initiated by their powerful neighbour and yet contributing nothing towards the cost and upkeep of them.

Adelaide is governed by a mayor and six aldermen elected by the whole body of the ratepayers, and is the only Australian city in which the mayor is so elected.