THOSE PRIVATE STREETS. The Loaves and Fishes Scramble.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 191, 27 February 1904, Page 6

THOSE PRIVATE STREETS. The Loaves and Fishes Scramble.

IT appears from the evidence adduced at a Newtown indignation meeting, held last Friday evening, that there are private streets in the southern suburb that are ma worse condition than streets alleged to be looked after by the City Council. Which is a terriblei indictment against the private streets. The private streets contribute to the municipal revenue, and when the Council have a few hundred tons of metal to throw away, they throw it away where clay from excavations and cuttings wovild serve much betIt appears that the City Council have no power to repair or look after any private street that contains no one they specially love, but can shower gifts of metal and labour on private streets that have a warm place m their affections. We were sorry when the Melrose Borough Amusement Council died, but there is happily a body of men m the southern suburb who (so we gather from the report of the meeting) can give that defunct Council points and win the race ambling. * * * Because the Legislature of this country didn't give the Corporation of Wellington power last session to convert private streets into public streets, .it is high time, according to that remarkable man Mr Rand, that the mayor of the city was changed. Mr. Rand is a pushing young man, who may have an eye on the mayoral chair, and he would undertake to see that the private streets were all made public, or that the blessings of metal were showered on all alike. Of course, we know that the average gardener would rather have a vegetable patch growing on a metal foundation, and that the metal hooked out of tne tram route is doing far more good as soil than it could do as a highway. We know it because the Wellington City Council assume that it is so.

There were hundreds of persons at the indignation meeting who ought to be mayor of this city, and who, if they stood for the position, would be rejected with great unanimity. There were possible mayors there who galloped off at all sorts of tangents, and would fix up any sort of a municipal matter as quickly as Mr. Macarthy could mould a loaf from dough. The expression of an opinion that Newtown could combine, and return a City Council of its own is an invitation to "cut the painter" that has but recently been made fast. In fact, it is inviting a return to Me'rosian revels. * * • As Mr. Barber pointed out, it is a sin to dump good metal into places that will never be used as highways, and even though the Council get. 1 Is a load for it. Supposing the metal was given to> the private streets, it is no more than the rate-paying residents m those streets have a right to expect. Tbe breaking of the metal probably cost three times the amount it is sold for, and when, in the future, the private streets are taken over by the city the Council will most certainly pay a great deal more than Is a load for absolutely necessary material. Giving it free to private streets would pay the Council much more handsomely in the long run than selling it cheaply to private property owners, but the Council apparently take no thought for the morrow.