BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, AUGUST 28, 1950 NO ROOM FOR DOUBT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 88, 28 August 1950, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, AUGUST 28, 1950 NO ROOM FOR DOUBT

Whakatane has agreed that its war memorial will be a Community Centre. This decision was made at a public meeting at which arrangements were made for the setting up of a committee to raise finance and design the centre. It was significant that the meeting, though it expressed approval of an offer from the Winter Show Association to sell its building and make substantial funds avail-

able, did not accept the offer or recommend the committee to accept it. The committee will have the complete say in whether or not the offer is accepted. But the Mayor, Mr Barry, was right when he said that, if it was not accepted, the Community Centre could be forgptten. Without the £5,000 or more which such a donation would bring forward, it appears almost impossible to secure sufficient for a building and surroundings worthy as a memorial and capable of fulfilling the functions of a Community Centre. The suggestion that the offer should only be accepted “without tags” bears little examination. .Anyone giving away a large sum of money, whether for a war memorial or not, is entitled to make stipulations about the spending of that

money. The principal “tag” made by the Winter Show Association that the new building be made available for shows free and be suitable for the holding of shows is a reasonable one. The association, virtually, is making possible a Community Centre for Whakatane and any suggestion that this gift be refused on the grounds that the Association’s ends are also served amounts to “looking a gift horse in the mouth.” Actually too many “red herrings” were drawn through the meeting. They tended to create doubts where no doubts need exist. Now that machinery is being set up to appeal to the public for support, no doubts, based as they are on irrelevancies, must exist. The committee will have a big enough task without the deterrent of any discord, "'he issue is a plain one and its bringing to a successful conclusion will be of the utmost importance to this community.