ROTORUA’S DRY ROT.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4859, 31 July 1925, Page 1

ROTORUA’S DRY ROT.

“ A MUNICIPAL CORPSE.” ATTEMPT AT RESURRECTION. One of the most delightfully-slash-ing, cultivated pens in the provincial journalism of New Zealand is that of the editor of the ‘‘Rotorua Chioniclc.” In the following leading .article lie places the municipal body across his editorial knees and gives it a welldeserved spanking:— “Parsimony does not command success in any . walk of life ; in civil life it is disastrous. The extravagance that produces nothing is quite a different thing from the liberal spending which achieves results. To stare a threepenny bit out of countenance until it assumes the magnitude of half a crown for fear that no direct return will come from it is schoolboy finance at its worst. There is no blinking the fact that in the past Rotorua has been financially starved. Itis whole social life and gaiety has been leeched out of it. We have had two years of municipal control, and the gloom that envelopes the town at night is as heavy as the fog on the Pontine marshes and as deadly to business. O'a show night the 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 until we encourage light, music, and laughter. Rotorua im a municipal corpse, and unless revived will need disinfecting and burying. The bath-house, vast and glittering deception, what a magnificent spot for winter night concerts and promenades I A few nights ago, when the moon was at full, visitors were gazing with admiration at the splendid, well-lighted fascade, the rising moon magnificently silhouetting the multi-gabled roof. They went full of anticipation. The building was delightfully warm in contrast to the chill night air, .Warmth .and comfort were there. They prowled around the corridors ; a courteous attendant explained the baths, an interesting hour wag 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 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 too afraid of letting ourselves go. The result is that Rotorua ist going to be outstripped by all 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. Te Aroha is awakening, while Rotorua slumbers on, soothed into a fatal 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 duo 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, and 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 businessman and 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 bn a businesslike way of catering for them.”