DEVONPORT’S PARADE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 984, 29 May 1930, Page 16

DEVONPORT’S PARADE

RECONSTRUCTION WORK URGED DEPUTATION TO COUNCIL “The ratepayers along Queen's Parade will all be dead and buried before the Devonport Borough Council will conclude its negotiations with the Government for a grant toward the reconstruction of the Parade/' asserted Mr. G. Minchin, spokesman for a deputation of Parade ratepayers which waited on the Devonport Borough Council last evening to urge immediate attention to the Parade footpaths. The deputation chided the councillors with having put votes on the estimates for the work and not carrying it out. Mr. J. Hislop, deputy - Mayor, stated that in addition to considerable work now being carried out on the footpaths in question, the council had voted £IOO for further work and he could assure the deputation that the work would be treated as urgent. He mentioned that, to save the Queen’s Parade properties from risk of destruction by the sea, the council had recently spent £15,000 on a new sea-wall and improvements.

Estimates for the spending of £7,702 on public works were provisionally approved. A vote of £ 600 for re-align-ing Kerr Street was modified to £l5O and the engineer was instructed to suggest other possible modifications, with a view to increasing the money available for footpath work. POSTER PROTEST

The film censor, in acknowledging the receipt of a protest against the class of poster exhibited outside the local picture theatre, stated that if the posters were shown on licensed hoardings the council had its remedy’, otherwise the aid of the police should be sought. The censor intimated that the Department of Internal Affairs was considering regulations to govern the display of poster advertising of this type.

The Auckland Gas Company was granted permission to beautify the street fronting its works on Lake Road, subject to council control. The rate for this year, 7d in the £ on the unimproved values, was struck. Mr. F. T. Eyre, who admitted that he seemed always to “be up against the Ferry Company,” complained that the company had asked the town clerk and not the council for permission to hold its annual meeting in the council chambers. Mr. Hislop said that the meetings had. been held there since 1883 and took half an hour once a year. It had become largely a question of sentiment, he said. Other councillors classed the complaint as pin-pricking, particularly in view of the large sums of money (in addition to labour) that the company annually granted the council to assist in beautifying work in the borough and maintaining swimming facilities. A request that more of the trees on Mount Victoria should be cut down was not sympathetically received, but the engineer will investigate complaints regarding the trees causing a nuisance.