This Act may be cited as the Timaru City Rates Consolidation Act 1952.

In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires,—

Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in section ninety-six or section one hundred and fifty-two of the Municipal Corporations Act 1933 or in any other enactment, the Council, in lieu of making and levying separately the general rate and all or any separate or special rates leviable over the whole of the city or over any part or parts thereof, may in any year, by resolution, make and levy over the whole of the city a rate (hereinafter called a consolidated rate) of such amount as will produce a sum not greater than the sum that would be produced by making and levying the said rates separately. Any consolidated rate may be made and levied over the whole of the city notwithstanding that any part or parts of the city may not be liable for any of the separate or special rates for which the consolidated rate is substituted.

Nothing in this section or in any resolution passed thereunder shall affect the liability of the Crown for payment of any special rates in accordance with the provisions in that behalf of section one hundred and twenty-three of the Local Bodies’ Loans Act 1926.

A demand for any consolidated rate shall specify the several rates in lieu of which the consolidated rate has been made.

Nothing in this section shall be so construed as to affect in any way the security afforded to any creditor of the Council by any special rate.

The proceeds of a consolidated rate made and levied under this section shall be applied for the purposes of the several rates in lieu of which such consolidated rate was made.

All acts of the Council heretofore done in making, levying, and demanding rates before and for the year ending the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and fifty-three, are hereby validated, and the said rates are hereby declared to have been validly and lawfully made, levied, and demanded.