Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News SATURDAY, JULY 2, 1898. THE BOROUGH ELECTION.

Te Aroha News, Volume XIV, Issue 2123, 2 July 1898, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News SATURDAY, JULY 2, 1898. THE BOROUGH ELECTION.

When we, the familiar figures of today in the streets of Te Aroha, are gone to our rest, posterity looking back to the present momentous period in the history of our fledgling borough will be able calmly to review the wisdom or otherwise of our choice of mayor and councillors next week. A heavy responsibility rests with us in making this choice. The opportunity has been given us to elect a body ©f' councillors into whose hands will be committed the building up of what we all hope will become a town of importance by reason of its exceptional endowments. It behoves us, therefore, to exercise the utmost care iu casting our votes at the polls next week. If history shows one thing more plainly than another, it is that the progress and prosperity of a community is largely dependent on the wisdom displayed by its founders in framing its laws and shaping its policy. This is no new country teeming with undeveloped resources and menaced with unknown dangers. To revert to the use of a hackneyed term our chief assets are well-known and are to be found in those peculiar gifts nature in her | bounty has so freely lavished upon us and which so conspicuously qualify Te Aroha to become one of the leading sanatoria in the colonies. The lines upon which the business of a colonial borough should be conducted are well recognised now-a-days, and l the statistics of local governing bodies | issued annually from the Government printer’s office, indirectly afford,a ready | check upon extravagance in management. We are willing to take it for 1 granted that every one of the candidates feels that he possesses some knowledge of the routine of business pursued by. public bodies, if he does not • he has no right to ask for the suffrages of .the ratepayers. One of our reasons for supporting Mr Thomas Gavin, apart from the fact that his splendid services in the past entitle him to the honor of being the first occupant. of the Te Aroha mayoral chair, may be found in the fact that he has unusual qualifications for the position from a business as well as from a personal point of view, being a man of excellent address. As for the policy by which the mayor and council will be guided in a campaign in which the prize will be the capture of public patronage and favor, that is no matter for any individual member of the body corporate to decide. The choice of councillors to be made next week should be such as will include only men animated by a high sense of public duty; men who are the least likely to allow their private feelings to colour the discharge of their municipal duties or warp their judgment iu civic concerns. Men of the larger mental growth who can be relied upon to take broad-views on all questions sprung on their attention by the varying exigencies of a municipality having not only local, but cosmopolitan interests to serve. For we shall have the ball at our feet next season. Ft is no easy task the ratepayers have before them. The importance of the work the men of their choice will have to discharge cannot be overestimated. What we dread more than anything else is the possibility—and such a possibility exists at the present moment—of the council chamber of the young borough beiug turned into a cock-pit, orparadingground forprivate animosities. When Mr James Mills declined to allow himself to be nominated a candidate for the office of councillor, we ‘ venture to conjecture, he had the truth of this partly iu view. He is quite patriotic enough to be influenced by that fear. The babel of conflicting opinions respecting the fitness or otherwise of the respective candidates for the various offices to be filled assailing us at present is but tbe natural accompaniment of a municip :l election. In Mr Gavin, a candidate, as our readers are aware, for mayoral honours, we have a capable and ex- 1 perieuced administrator in whose hands 1 nothing relating to the business of the borough will suffer- With regard to t < the other candidate for that office we i l have said our say. While recognising I i

his great services and sterling qualities he is not at all suited for the position, and the interests of the borough would not be.served by his election. W-* take it that Mr Gavin’s success is assured, so what we want now is to select a body of men competent t > formulate and carry out, with his assistance, a policy best calculated to advance our interests in the silent but grim struggle for patronage now being waged betvvoen the northern sanatoria —a struggle which will be intensified in an extraordinary degree by th' opening of the Te Aroha-Thames railway at Christmas, and the forthcoming exhibition at Auckland. The policy we should like to see adopted must be liberal and enlightened and one fully recognising the wants and requirements of a luxurious and pleasure seeking age An age in which the convenience of the travelling public and the invalided must be closely studied in order to Secure their custom —so all important in our case. Ratepayers, in making their choice, will also be well advised in remembering that elements making for harmony and unity in the council chamber will do more to expedite business and secure progress than any combination their wit can devise. We make no attempt to forecast the result of the councillors’ election, but venture to predict that Mr Thomas Gavin will be returned at the head of the poll on Tuesday next by a substantial majority.