Correspondence

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 120, 7 April 1892, Page 2

Correspondence

WASTED MONEY. TO THE EDITOR OF THIS STAR. Sir — It is with a certain amount of regret that I feel compelled to act the critic's part, being convinced that the least interference with the freedom of action of our public men the better for all parties, and providing they act with justice and impartiality, to hamper them with suggestions and instructions cannot tend in any way to the advantage of the community. However, in the present instance, when money is so urgently required to give many settlers a decent track to their properties in the Harbor Block, I think that I am perfectly justified in finding fault with the warden, Mr Lucas, in connection with the two jobs now under way here. The first I will mention is the metalling of a piece of the Cheltenham Cross road. This is a mere bye road for the exclusive use and benefit of one settler only, the said settler having an excelleuly formed road already, and a metalled road within a few chains of his gate. This action evidently smacks of red-hot favoritism. It may be fair that kissing should go by favor, but the settlers here insist, and justly too, that rates should not be spent by favor. The money spent, and thus comparatively wasted as far as the public weal ss concerned, would, if it had been judiciously expended, have added no small amount of comfort and convenience to many an illused back settler. The other item which I would like to draw attention to is the piece of formation on Pollock's road. This piece of work was sufficiently large to have been tendered for or, at any rate, let by the job. I have been reliably informed that a settler in the locality offered to undertake this work at ten shillings a chain, and no doubt if let in the ordinary way, it could be done for that. But, no, a man is put on by the day, and from the progress he has already made it will doubtless cost the Board two pounds per chain. It has been proved, times out of number, that this is the most costly way of doing public work, as one man working by the piece will do as much in a day as five men doing the well-known Government, or in this Eoad Board, stroke. I am, etc., Harbor Board.