WIDENING OF PRINCES STREET.

Evening Star, Issue 3811, 12 May 1875, Page 2

WIDENING OF PRINCES STREET.

To (he Editor. Sir,—This is a serious business. If get-out-able at all we must do it. Instead of L 40.009. I behove it will cost the City from first to last about LIOOjOOO. We have the Corporation tenants,, P a y» besides the very heavy expense of making, which means filling-in the street all its length and width of thirty feet. That will be no easy matter. Where can the material be got from easily ? Then, again, metalling and kerbmg it, not to speak of shifting the gas and water pipes, which means breaking the street very thoroughly. There is no saying what it may come to, and all for what. A mere idea. There is no necessity for it. > There are streets in London and Wasgow with ten times the traffic not so wide. If the Corporation, instead of going to the enormous expense contemplated, had inserted a bye-law in the Corporation Act compelling drays and waggons, when loading and unloadmg, to be lengthwise in the street instead of allowing them to stand right across the necessity for^ widening would never have occurred to any Rational man. _ Our taxes are heavy enough already, and if this is carried out they will almost be unbearable. The money this alteration will cost would have given us new gras* works, and kept our streets in order for years tocome. It is nonsense to quibble over the arbitrators fees; they are insignificant in comparison to the principal sum. The citizens ought to be grateful to them for reducing the claims so much. In Mr Fish’s claim alone they saved the citizens L 2.500. There is no doubt Mr Fish has been the main spring for the widening. He was conscientiously of opinion that it would cost the citizens L 14.000 at the outside. He only sent in his claim for about L 7,000, and there are nine tenants, so his calculations and demand are quite in keeping, I appeal, therefore, to him to stay further proceedings, because, on his own showing, he has not got what he is entitled to by L 2,500. In er this l° ss he can very well state that when he advocated the widening he did not think it would cost nearly so muon. Now that he finds it otherwise, he will go in for allowing the street to remain as it is. Phis will earn for him the gratitude of the citizens. Let * “luting be called at once, and I have no doubt Mr Fish will take advantage of it to back up the citizens into backing-out of this huge blunder.—l am, &0., Dunedin, May 11.

Ratepayer