STREET MISMANAGEMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 3843, 18 June 1875, Page 2

STREET MISMANAGEMENT.

To the Editor. Sib, - What a disgraceful condition the streets are in, through the incapacity or sloth of our councillors. Doing the big business financially in the water department, or in the herculean blundery of York place and Princes street, is only worthy of their attention. The misappropriation of the city revenue in the previously mentioned works is intensely aggravated in the condition of the streets, whether old or new, by forcing the citizens to have Hobson’s choice in walking the mud and extorting the rates at law to k* ep up the abortion of construction and maintenance. Demonstrative proofs present themselves daily. Cumberland and Castle streets are oases which prove the utter failure and waste of attempting to form streets with expensive broken metaL The light traffic on them has already turned up the clay in the very crown of the streets. The flat form of all the streets (excepting Manse street), is consuming more than onehalf the metal necessary, say, L 3,000 per year. An illustration presented itself a few days ago fronting the esplanade of the Supreme Court, the scraping machine, after taking six inches of mud from the centre of the street, exposed cross sections of ravines that would have concealed the colossal form of the inspector a id the cylinder physique of his coadjutor. This is the proper way te get rid oMhe metal and keep the hmse-t employed for the present and future. Does it ever strike the Councillors and ratepayers that the formation of all new streets and maintenance of same as at present,. answer the above purpose only. Your readers will remember the pharasaioal financial mockery *of haggling about the cost ef inventing a stone-breaking machine for ss, when, either through dense stupidity or sloth, the loss of 200 per cent, m broken meta! is counted as nothing to the citizens. of Shckinillu, said of the blue-noses of ft ova ScoUa, Did you ever know any of them to be at the labor of thinking,” Now, sir* tlua is a true representation of many a councillor' Ask any of them about the condition

of the streets, oh ! they say, that is the work of'the engineer (exactly the same idea as their neighbors of the Harbor Board). Is there any wonder that street management is in such a state when councillors, from sloth or anything else, abandon their brains to a second party. VHiat is to be said in excuse of us soft bones of ratepayers, when waste of our money goes on daily before our eyes, and no public spirit is shown. ThesO' three items of mismanagement and misappropriation of revenue ought to arouse the thoughtful and energetic of our citizens to take an interest in the management of the city and thoroughly ventilate the permanent and costly evil of flat streets and broken metal for foundations of new ones. It is no exaggeration to say that it is a greater waste of the contents of the Corporation treasury than either Princes street widening or York place witting. An examination of all the principal traffic streets to-day will show the crown the lowest part, and a receptacle for all the water, which is eating in to the foundation and manufacturing mud at an unsurpassed speed in any city of the world. I protest against the squandering of the public money in a hopeless attempt to maintain the streets, and invoke the pens of the ratepayers to discuss this question before the election of future Councillors, in which the writer will assist.—l am, &c„ Ratepayer. Dunedin, June 18.