The Kumara Times. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 1877.

Kumara Times, Issue 227, 27 June 1877, Page 2

The Kumara Times. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 1877.

Our local public bodies appear to be singularly given to playing the game of " cro33 purposes." There are numerous instances that- we might mention to prove this, but it will suffice to take the last. This is the course they have adopted on the question of the Teremakau Bridge. Petitions in favour of the construction of this bridge were most numerously signed and duly presented to the Connty Councils of Westland and Grey. The petition! have been received and dealt with.' But how p The latter Council passed a resolution. "That this Council co-operate with the Westland County Council to erect a bridge over the Teremakau." The former Council resolved " that the Chairman be requested to write to the Honourable the Minister of Public Workß, requesting the Government to place sufficient sums on the estimates for the purpoae of erecting bridges, over the Teremakau on the main-road from Greymouth, and the Hokitika river, oh the main-road to Boss, as in the opinion of this Council both of these works are Colonial works,., the cost of which should be borne 1 by the General Government." When these resolutions of the Couuties are thus put together, there is something positively ridiculous about them. They remind one irresistibly of the story of the two boys who replied to the question " What are you doing?"—the first by saying "Nothing," and the second by saying " Helping Jack." The Grey Council will help; the Westland Council and the Westland. Council will do—nothing. And this is the result of a petition' signed by nearly 2000 persons, each one of whom is smarting under the infliction of what all feel to be an unreasonable and insupportable wrong. No action is to be taken in the matter j there is no patting your shoulder to the wheel, but Jupiter is to be appealed to. This constant procrastination it is that has disgusted Kumara with Council and Road Board and Education Board. The resolution of the Westland Council means nothing less than that the present miserable appliances for crossing the Teremakau shall continue in existence for an indefinite period. We cannot but think that the Grey Council hava fair cause for complaint for having been stultified in the. manner they have been by the action of the Westland Council. Their Chairman has received a letter, which we publish in another column, from the Chairman of the Westland County Council, almost pledging this body to defray half the cost of constructing the Teremakau bridge. On the faith of that letter'the Grey Council passed their resolution to co-operate in the work. It must strike them as a most extraordinary act of discourtesy, to entirely ignore them after inviting their assistance. But much as the Grey Council have cause for complaint, we believe that the people of this district have still more. As Mr Robinson points out in his letter to Mr Guinness, the erection of the bridge could have been undertaken at once, the money for it was obtainable without difficulty, and might be secured either by a special ra*e, by an annual amount taken from s.oldficlds' revenue, or from tolls on the bridge itself—should it be deemed desirable to levy tolls. A fourth means of paying off the amount is that which seems to have occurred to the minds of tlte Westland members only at the eleventh hour, vix., getting an appropriation fnm Government. We perfectly acree with the Council that the work is one which the Government should and we believe that it will be so considered by ihe House. What need however is there to wait for that appropriation ? The Counties might have done the work at once, on the plea of its pressing necessity, and

their case for a government grant would have been all the stronger. In the face of ..these facts, to put off the building of the" bridge till the amount for it shall have been voted by the House of Assembly is a'waste of the time, patience, and money of the people of this district, alike astonishing and inexcusable.