TOWN IMPROVEMENT.

Patea Mail, 4 September 1880, Page 2

TOWN IMPROVEMENT.

The Patea Town Board will have to take action, at their meeting next Monday, on the question of calling a public meeting to endorse a proposed loan “ for the purposes of drainage, street-forma-tion, tree-planting, and securing a waterright for the town.” This resolution was adopted at the beginning of July, and so far as we know it has lain a dead letter during two months. To pass a resolution of this character and not to act on it is a process of trifling with public business which the public ought not to tolerate. The first consequence of doing nothing is that, in the important matter of tree-planting, a whole year is lost by losing the season for planting. Members of the Board may apportion the blame as they please, but the Board as a body cannot escape the silent censure of every resident who appreciates the necessity of providing a thick shelter of timber against the prevailing wind, and continuing the belt all round the town as soon after that as the funds may allow. It needs no special wisdom to point out how easily a small sum might have been borrowed for tree-planting, if the Board had been in earnest to utilise the planting season before it is past. Each succeeding year would show the wisdom of those who had the public spirit to be wise in time. We can all realise the beauty and utility of a sheltering belt of timber around a windy homestead when the trees have grown up. Why cannot we profit by that every-day tact by beginning tree-planting in the earliest season, leaving the result to justify our active foresight ?