TOWN IMPROVEMENT MEETING.

Taihape Daily Times, 5 February 1919, Page 4

TOWN IMPROVEMENT MEETING.

On Friday evening- a meeting of ratepayers of the borough is to be' held in the Town Hali to hear and discuss a scheme for town improvement. Whatever the result may be of their efforts, our Mayor and borough councillors are entitled to the ratepayers' most sincere appreciation for putting in motion the machinery to attain that which is urgently needed. There may not be two ratepayers present who will be in entire agreement with every detail of the Council's proposals, but what they have to consider is whether the scheme is a desirable and urgently needed one as a whole. Councillors have employed a consulting engineer to advise them, but still there may be some minor matters in the proposal upon which they are not in entire accord. Therefore, what the meeting will have to guard against is that no unimportant proposal shall be allowed to wreck the whole of the Councils admirable efforts. That the main streets of the town, which are everybody's streets, certainly need all that the Council has proposed, r tnra which the consulting engineer <has recommended, excepting, perhaps, the gardens down the centre of Main Street, cannot be denied. Experience in cities is that, such cultivated enclosures are costly to keep from being an eyesore, and in provincial towns —Pahiatua for instance—the expense is too great for the ratepayers to bear, and they lapse into neglected wastes. Further, we are of opinion that the whole of the street surface i 9 not more than is needed for preset traffic, and to use it up Id making garde"** vo.ry shortly result in intolerable congestion. Other than to stress the urgent necessity for street improvement on the lines of the Council's proposals it is not necessary for us to tell the meeting wnat the town must have if business and population is to go on increasing. Every ratepayer thaf wishes to pee Taihape take its place amongst leading towns of the Dominion it should, and could, occupy, will no doubt make it hip duty to be present

at the Town Hall on Friday night to

hear what the Mayor and councillors have to state in support of the course they have taken and the proposals they have f.o make. In another column is published details of the town improvement scheme, as recommended by Mr. Williams, the consulting engineer, so that ratepayers may be under no misapprehension about what is proposed, or the amount of money involved therein We believe the Council ba<? submitted a scheme the adoption of which, with minor exceptions, will prove to be in every ratepayers' best interests.