“Dog-in-the-Manger”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 402, 10 July 1928, Page 1

“Dog-in-the-Manger”

COUNCIL AND BATHS Fears For the Summer

THE swimming season will be here before the City Council moves, and once again Aucklanders will be unable to swim. Swimming baths cannot be built in a day.”

In a vigorous letter to The Sun, Mr. H. Harley Devereux wants to know why there is delay on the part pf the city council in submitting to the ballot its coming loan proposals—particularly that for a loan of £22,000 with which to erect municipal swimmingbaths at Point Chevalier? “The announcement that this loan was to be placed*before the ratepayers was made some considerable time ago, but since then silence,” he says. “Is the council resigned to the inevitable rejection of the loan by its already over-taxed ratepayers? If so, why does it not do the decent thing—abandon this ridiculous proposal, and allow Dixieland Ltd., to go ahead and build us bigger and batter baths—free of cost to us? “FILTRATION NECESSARY n “Some time ago we were told that three loan proposals would shortly be placed before us—one for the erection of baths at Point Chevalier, one for the installation of filtration plants in the present baths at Parnell and Shelly Beach, and for improvements to the Tepid Baths, and a third for certain other works not connected with swimming-baths. The only cheery thing connected with the council’s announcement is the fact that these three proposals will be put to us as separate issues—thus giving us a

chance to kill the first proposal and to carry the second—filtration plants being badly required at the present baths. But why this delay in submitting the proposals to the ballot? it not been for the procrastinating and ‘dog-in-the-manger’ attitude of the council, Auckland would ere this have been able to boast of the finest swimming-baths south of the equator at Point Chevalier. But the council’s senseless objections to Dixieland Ltd., being allowed to construct its new baths have created an absolute deadlock. “ EMBARRASSING NERO” “The council has committed some grave blunders in the past, but its attitude on this question will be for ever held up as an example of autocratic interference such as must make Nero’s shade hide his head in embarrassment. And Nero’s shade will not be alone in this when the next municipal elections come round. We Aucklanders may feel powerless under the heel of the council, but we have long memories, and ‘even a worm . .’ “I presume Dixieland Ltd., is still prepared to build its baths at Point Chevalier if the council will withdraw its opposition. The council must give way ultimately. Why does it not do it now?”