DRY ROT.

Franklin Times, Volume 14, Issue 259, 31 July 1925, Page 7

DRY ROT.

ROTORUA REPRIMANDED. “A MUNICIPAL CORPSE.” ! One of the most delightfully-slash-ing, cultivated pens in the provincial journalism of New Zealand is that of the editor of the Rotorua Chronicle. In the following leading article he places I lie municipal body across his editorial knees and gives it a welldeserved spanking:— , “Parsimony does not command success in any walk of life; in civic life it is disastrous. The extravagance that produces nothing is quite a different tiling from the liberal spending which achieves results. To stare a threepenny hit out of countenance until it assumes the magnitude of half-a-ero wn for fear I hat no direct return will come from it is school-hov finance at its worst. There is no blinking the fact that in the past Rotorua has been financially starved. Us whole social life and gaiety has been leeched out of it. We have had two years of municipal control, and the gloom that envelops the town at night is as heavy as Ihe fog on the Pontine marshes and as deadly to business. On show night i Ihe band played on the balcony of the King’s Theatre, and even that was a small uplift and did much to encourage sociability. Rotorua will never progress unless we encourage light, music and laughter. Rotorua is a municipal corpse, and unless revived will need disinfecting and burying. The bath-house, that vast and glittering, deception, what a magnificent spot for winter night concerts and promenades! A few nights ago. when the moon was at full ,visitors were gazing with admiration at the splendid, well-lighted facade, the rising moon magnificently silhouetting the multi-gabled roof. They went full of anticipation. The building was delightfully warm in con-

trast to Ihe chill night air. Warmth and comfort were there. They prowled around file corridors; a courteous attendant explained the baths ,an interesting hour was spent, but all of human life to be seen were two gentlemen in the cooling room, two more negotiating a Priest bath, and one casual spectator, who, like the visitors, came to have a look round. The great building was as still as a grave wrapt in "profound social gloom. A great asset wasted for want of enterprise and business acumen. The waterfront. once gay with light and sheltered by beautiful trees, an ideal spot to convert into the Dominion’s playgrounds! Ten thousand pounds spent wisely in a dancing floor, band.and band rotunda, bathing facilities where mixed bathing could be indulged in, and aquatic sports encouraged, would be repaid in less than a decade. We are too slow and 100 afraid of letting ourselves go. The result is that Rotorua is going to be outstripped by her thermal competitors. Wairakei and Taupo are making great strides. Okoroire is again a popular week-end resort, and through enterprise, and good management is becoming increasingly so. To Aroha is awakening, Rotorua slumbers on, soothed into a total sleep by trustful assurance in the Tourist Department. The blindest of humans cannot fail to have noted the gradual freezing up of our spa. Where crowds.used to gather in the grounds ,a stray single, or a felicitous dua, who care for nothing under the encircling heavens, can be seen. Departmental rejuvenation is not probable under the present unsympathetic Ministerial conditions. The goose that laid the golden egg has been killed. ancl they who killed will Keep it. well dead to prove their case. To popularise the bath-house would be to confess the failure that every business man atul every person of average foresight predicted. The only hope lies in municipal policy; a policy that is based on a reasonable conception of human needs and on a businesslike way of catering for them.”