Coming to Terms.

Patea Mail, 16 June 1882, Page 2

Coming to Terms.

A reasonable plan for a popular loan scheme is now being tried by the Borough Council. The Mayor lias acted sensibly in giving way to the clear desire of a majority of the Council. It is reasonable that every Councillor should desire to have a hand in framing the details of a loan scheme, and no mere question of form should be allowed to stand in the way of carrying out the resolution adopted at Tuesday’s meeting. The wording of the resolution was not happy, but the thing aimed at is clear and right, in our opinion. It must be conceded, also, that Councillors had a proper though brief opportunity before to cut and carve the Mayor’s scheme in detail ; but they all strangely let the chance pass, and then began to criticise and grumble when it was too late. That experience has been a severe lesson to all of them. They are profiting by it now to the extent of taking the new loan proposal into their hands .as a Council, instead of letting a single member frame and propose a complete scheme. It does not signify a brass farthing who proposes the loan scheme, so long as it is a. good and proper scheme which a majority can accept an d cordially agree in recommending to the ratepayers. The threat of a deadlock in the Council is happily avoided. How much better it is to make concession on points o£ form, than to stickle for some rigid reading of the Act against the sense of a large majority. With all respect for the minority, we think they are wrong on the question of accepting levels. The Act being silent either way, we must.fall back on the common rule established by the practice of public bodies. That rule is that an Engineer receives instructions to prepare plans for a particular work, but until those plans are formally approved by the Council, they are only the Engineer’s plans. The Engineer may prepare two alternative plans of the same work, according to the expense and the money available. In that case both plans are binding on the Council, or neither is binding. This illustrates the impracticable working of the Mayor’s ruling. Plans are only plans until they receive the force of law by the Council’s formal adoption. To say that plans are adopted because they are laid on the table is a doctrine that could not be limited to plans. There must be a record on the minute book to satisfy a court of law that a plan of street levels has been legalised by adoption. The absence of such record would be fatal to the theory of adoption by merely laying plans on the table. However, the point is no longer in active dispute, and there remains nothing to prevent the Council from acting harmoniously in framing the details of this new loan scheme.