PATENT SLIP COMMISSION

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3010, 22 February 1917, Page 9

PATENT SLIP COMMISSION

PARTIES PRACTICALLY AGIiEE. The Patent Slip Commission, consisting of Mr. W. G. Itiddell, S.M., and Mr. W. J. Roche, Lower Hutt Borough Engineer, eat in the Magistrate's Court yesterday morning. The commission was instructed to decide as to tho construction of a road near the. Patent Slip. . ' According to the original grant, tho Patent Slip is empowered, when it was thought necessary and desirable, to closo the beach road and construct another road over the hill, and the Government has the right to order the formation of this road. At present traffic hae to go across the slipway, and tho question has arisen whether the delays which occur when vessels aro being drawn Tip are of such a character as to warrant a- road doviation. The object of the commission is to decide whether there is any necessity for this deviation.

A second Slip is in course of constmiction, as required by tho Harbour Board, and tho City Council demanded that the Patent Slip Company should construct tho road deviation, -while the company was opposed to this course, considering ifc to be unnecessary at tho presen-t time. Last Thursday tho parties obtained an adjournment, in order to have an opportunity of arriving at a definite agreement. Yesterday Mr. John O'Shea appeared for tho City Council, Mr. M. Myexe'for the Patent Slip Company, and Mr. C. H. Izard for the Wellington Harbour Board, Mr. Izaro 1 announced that counsel had practically come to an agreement, but that it would be necessary to submit a draft to the Harbour Board and City Council for ratification. The commission adjourned. £01 February 28. A"n extension of time for tho furnishing of a report will almost certainly be asked for. The Mayor, interviewed yesterday as to the probable aEreement, said that_ if would be on tho lines indicated by him ■when interviewed by a I)ohinion reporter about February 9. His statement then was that an arrangement might bo come to by the engineers concerned to malee the existing road availablo for traffic, and that as tho works developed in Evans Bay there would, in all probability, be large auantities of spoil removed from the hills' afc the Tear of the Slip which would help to make an alternative road.on the flat possible.