CITY BASE LINE.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2613, 3 July 1871, Page 2

CITY BASE LINE.

To the Editor, Sin, —In your issue of Friday, June IGth, there appeared a letter signed by Mr Robert Gillus, in which he very freely gives his opinion upon a very necessary work now in progress —viz , City base line. He also endeavors (through philanthropic motives) to mislead his fellow-citizens and ratepayers, by telling them that to have the boundaries of their property surveyed will not only be throwing away LIOO, but surely end in increased confusion and consequent litigation. Of a truth, Mr R. Gillies must have a very poor opinion of the common sense and the notions of nman and team enterta ned by the property owners of this good City. It may be as well, before further analysing Mr Gillies’s motives, to show the uninitiated in a few words how the base line will ali’ect their properties. It will enable the City Surveyor to place the (proposed

to be kid) in its proper position on the ground, thereby putting every owner in front of whose property the ktrbmg has been so laid in a positi. u with very little trouble to fix not only the Ic. el of bn own property, bub also give them the budding level of such property. ' There can, 1 am sure, be no owner of town sections (with the exception of surveyors) but will plainly see that a very great saving to them as a body will be made by the very judicious action taken by Ins W orsbip the Mayor and City Corporation in adopting the recommendation of the City Surveyor. I need hardly refer to the cost of having the position and permanent level of one’s property found fin them by piivatu survey as a largo number of the section owners m this ' ity ha\e had experience of the very reasonable (?) charges made by certain would-be monopolists on that score, nor to the very unpleasant feeling of not knowing even then if your land is where it should he I will merely suppose a very low estimate of the possible cost to the whole of the pro perty-owners (unless the base liu is completed)—say L2OOO : I think lam consider ably under the mark. Mr Robert Cillies in his high position as a surveyor might reason ably be supposed to nett say L7OO of this sum. Now as the whole cost to the rate payers will be LIOO, and none of this amount goes into Mr R. Gillies’s pocket, I do not think it will bo very difficult to arrive at tin true motive of Mr Gillies’s sudden fit of philanthropy, and will leave it to the “own era of property to take the matter into consideration,” and give credit to whom credit is due. I m, &c., Pro Bono Publico. Dunedin, June 30.