Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, MAY 80, 1899. Practice and Precept.

Manawatu Herald, 30 May 1899, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, MAY 80, 1899. Practice and Precept.

— .» . On Friday night at the public meeting called to discuss the advisability of raising a loan for road metalling, the very practices we had foreshadowed were adopted. Men opposed to the loan did not come boldly out and put their case before the meeting but they adopted the tactics of depreciating the proposals made, pretending more substantial work was needed to be done to that which was proposed, all in the hope of throwing cold water upon the affair. The meeting was but another exhibition of the apathy shown by the ratepayers in the advancement of their town, as the chief opponents to the loan took good care to be present, but those who approved of it were lesser in numbers. In face of this we were very surprised to find that only five more votes were recorded against the loan than were given in its favour, especially as neither the Mayor or the Councillors urged one word in favour of a proposition emanating from the Council table, and the whole duty of getting up the figures were left to the Town Clerk and placed before the meeting in a half-hearted manner by the Mayor, without his having in anyway tested the matter with that official. It can be truly said, as we shall show further on, that perhaps without intentionally meaning it both Mr Nye and the Mayor gave the meeting incorrect facts. Mr George Nye has been a good citizen, though since trouble arose about the use of his gravel pit by the Council he has thought better to " cut the painter" with the town in business dealings. He goes upon the

plan that it the town can do Without him he can do just as Well without the town. We are doing Mr Mye no ln= justice in making this statement ag he has made no secret of the View's hd holds. It Can hardly be expected therefore that Mr Ny'e attended the meeting to forward the interests! of the town, but it Was with the purpose of conserving his own. Mr Nye has' always expressed his objection to a loan, and as he has A metalled road to his entrance gate he has not that spur other settlers have who are not so luckily situated. Whan Mr Nye r"dse and ridiculed to the best of his ability, the proposals for metalling the roads of the Borough prepared by the Borough Engineer, fid contended that it was absurd to place only six inches of metal on newly-formed roads, and with a lapse of memory which it was painful to witness, declared no capable man would do so foolish a thing. Mr Nye thought that another i"isoo would be needed to make the roads proposed, and thought the ratepayers had better increase the amount to that sum. Having arrived at this hilarious stage he calculated that the loan would then be £4600 and the interest some £230, which h.e encouragingly remarked was just what the Borough could not pay. To make matters look blacker, he, in a grave manner, asked the Mayor how many miles of roads were v already metalled, and on being informed there were ten, he asked if the repairs to these roads did not absorb the whole of the rates, and was again told by the Mayor that they did. ♦' How then, if such is Hie case " ejaculated Mr Nye " can the new eight miles be maintained?" With wrong premises and mistaken figures Mr Nye worked up to these erroneous statements, how incorrect we shall proceed to show. Mr Nye appeared at the meeting as no novice either in roadmaking or in the financial position of the Council and if his memory had not failed him that night he would never have said what he did. Mr Nye has been Mayor on two separate occasions, and in the first year he took office he prepared specifications for roadmaking and passed the work, and did so for a portion of the time * when he was in office the second time, as a proof of which there is a resolution on the Minute BOOL relating to the subject. During his period of office Mr Nye secured, what he gracefully termed, the metalling of the Moutoa roaJ from Mr Withers' house to the cross roads. It will be remembered that he took grave exception to Mr Chapman proposing to put only six inches of Palmerston metal on new roads, but it seems to have escaped his attention "that in the specification in his own handwriting for the Moutoa road he specified that the covering of the soil was to be " mixed gravel, one third clay or soil and two thirds gravel " which was to be taken from the Messrs Robinson's pit. There were 40 chains in this contract and of the above beautiful sandy mixture which was to be placed on a sandy bottom, he only allowed 560 yards. The result was that nine and one third yards was all the metal, and four and two-thirds yards of black soil, (for no clay was ever sent that ever went on to this road), and yet Mr Nye objected to the 14 yards per chain of Palmerston metal proposed by Mr Chapman ! Has Mr Nye any right to be considered a satisfactory critic of engineering in any branch ? The question has to be raised when he takes up the roll of critic. Do the Councillors and ratepayers remember the erection of a celebrated floodgate at Duck creek, which only remained in its position till the first fresh came, and then it was' washed out! Mr Nye was the designer and supervisor and the ratepayers money went with the floodgate. We have no animus against Mr Nye, but he places his opinion in contra to what appears to us to be for the good of the town, and his past actions have therefore to be brought to the test. On Friday night Mr Edmund Osborne replied to some good humoured chaffing about the metal road up to his gate, and he declared that the position was forced upon him, that other Councillors had proposed that the work should be done. It escaped Mr Osborne's memory, or at anyrate he did not let the meeting into the secret of the passing, of these resolutions. The meeting took place on the 2nd No vember, 1896, the last meeting at which Mr George Nye would sit as Mayor and Councillors made a little holiday in dividing up all the ready money there was, and nearly all that ! would be attainable, before Mr Stansell could come into office. At this scramble for the loaves and fishes the Minute Book records that Mr Osborne proposed and Cr Walsh seconded that tenders be called for metalling that portion of No. 2 Line as allocated. This is the piece of road from the Wirokino road to Mr George Nye's gate. The resolution was carried. Then Mr Osborne was lucky enough to get this resolution carried : — " That tenders be called for forming and metalling 16 chains Norbiton road." When Mr Stansell took office he found, and reported so to the Council, that to make these roads leading to : members of the Council's private property an overdraft from the bank had to be obtained. These two gentlemen therefore stand convicted of having obtained their favourite roads with an utter disregard to the financial position of the Council, or else they are disclosed as men who favour borrowing money at the expense of the ratepayers so long as the expenditure is a comfort and convenience to themselves. These are men who attend a public meeting with long faces with advice not to borrow, but who are unable to control the twinkle in their eye at having got up a little earlier than their neighbours. As what we have written can be endorsed by the book, will the ratepayers look upon such men as being worthy of having attention paid to their advice ?