THAT ALLEGED “STEAL”

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 61, 6 December 1926, Page 10

THAT ALLEGED “STEAL”

CITY COUNCIL KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT IT THE CORRESPONDENCE PRODUCED In Saturday’s issue of The Dominion there appeared an interview with Mr. T. Forsyth, the chairman of the Wellington Education Board, who stronglydeprecated the action of the City Council in consenting to lease for a term of forty years a portion of the Town Belt at Hutcheson Road to the Winter Show Association, on the ground that the board had for several years contemplated the erection of a new school on land immediately at the back of the area that was (according to sketch plans made public), to be occupied by the exhibition building, the very area that the board had in view as a playground for the children who would attend the new school.

As the Mayor (Mr. C. J. B. Norwood) was not cognisant of any arrangement to the effect conveyed by Mr. Forsyth’s protest, he, on being approached on Saturday, sent for the file bearing on the subject or akin to it. Without reservation, the Mayor handed over the file to a Dominion reporter for his inspection, saying that what was contained in the letters was all that was upon record as far as the City Council was concerned. The first was a letter dated June 21, 1920, and in it the board, writing to the City Council, proposed an exchange of the site of the present Newtown School in Riddiford Street for two sites on the Town Belt, one for Newtown East (near Hanson Street), and the other on the site near that of the proposed Winter Show building and ground. The answer of the-City Council went forward on July 13, to the effect that the council could not entertain.the proposal, as it meant an interference with the Town, Belt.

“So far as I am aware,” said Mr. Norwood, “that is all there is in it as far as the City Council is concerned. There was no agreement or a hint of any agreement, reserving a piece of Town Belt for a playground for the children of a school to be erected some time in the future. That might have been in the minds of the board at the time the matter was under discussion, but it did not reach tb e council in any official form.”