BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 1949 MORE ABOUT POWER

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 11, 13 July 1949, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 1949 MORE ABOUT POWER

If there is any possible way of getting it, we now feel that this district will get an increased power allocation. Our optimism is not shared by some others, who possibly have some knowledge of the situation which we have not.

However, we feel that the Borough Council took the right course on Monday night when they agreed to Mr W. Sullivan’s suggestion that a deputation should go with him to the Minister and the Controller to place the position before them personally and make the strongest possible representations for an increase.

Though the Mayor has not received our previous public-spir-ited suggestions on this question very well, and still continues to mutter against us, we venture to “rush into print” once more with the idea that the deputation might be strengthened if it could include representatives of the County Council and the Power Board.

After all, the County Council has already signified its intention of calling other local bodies into conference on the subject, and there is no doubt that the greater the backing for fine representations to be made in Wellington the greater their chance of success. We still cannot understand why we should be made the target of Mr Barry’s personal antagonism. We sought and still seek nothing but the common good, and can honestly find no point at which Mr Barry and ourselves should disagree or in fact have disagreed. ;

He is here assured that our intention was and still is to get as much public backing as possible for representations to the Controller and if necessary the Government in an endeavour to have rectified' what even Mr Barry himself admits is an unsatisfactory position. We regret it if our efforts to help are not appreciated by one man whose co-operation we had expected as a matter of course, so firmly convinced were we that public opinion was with us. We assure him his expressed desire for more hot water is shared by us in the literal sense only. We congratulate him and the Council on deciding to take the case right to the Controller and the Government. That was what we wanted.

And we still regard it as our duty to comment on matters of public interest and to let our readers do so, provided their letters are neither libellous, seditious nor indecent.