THE BOROUGH ENGINEER

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 72, 21 April 1909, Page 4

THE BOROUGH ENGINEER

KKPLIES TO OiiITICS. The street-corner critic of municipal ollicials and undertakings has been very bu«y of late. .Much of his atlenlion has been directed towards Mr A. 11. Kendall, I be borough engineer, who has latterly combined with his engineer's duties tin: wrk of foreman of streets, besides inspector of buildings, sanitary engineer, and a sort of inspector of the general inspector. Such a schedule of duties, if undertaken, by one nu'i, must give ample opportunity for criticism.

A "News" reporter has endeavoured during the ]>ast few duvs to have Hie complaints "scheduled,' so to speak. The principal of them, or the most utten reiterated, were :—That his work at the. side-drive, where he claimed to have stopped tlie excessive leakage, was ineffective, and that the tunnel leaked as badly as ever ; that he had greatly favoured one of the borough workmen, T. Partington, in the matter of providing employment, so that his earnings averaged from .€8 fls to £3 10s ; that his plans for draining the hollow Iving between Devon a;id dill streets, in'tiieeast ward, were so ridiculously faulty that for the sewers to work properly the sewage would need to run uphill'; that Mr Kendall was lcspousible lor tin; dismissal of Mr J. Hodgson, caretaker of the waterworks, and Mr 1». Jones, both of whom were old ai.., übared sennits of the loniiL'il ; and for the removal of I Mr S. Hooker, borough foreman, to the waterworks as caretaker; that the en- \ gineer had "docked" certain privileges! of payment which had been for many years enjoyed by the borough worknic'i'; that, owing to his methods, the streets were in a worse position to-day than ever they had been ; and that too much of the engineer's time was given to sending out "' war despatches." The other afternoon the. reporter sought out the engineer himself, and told' him of all these heinous offence* with which he was being charged. Mr Kendall did not seem very much alarmed, and explained that he was getting used tn this sort of thing, which he considered was inseparable from his office. Taking the complaintsyin the order given, he dealt with the side-drive, lie hail been out to the waterworks tunnel only that morning, and had inspected the sidedrive, which was as lumnlctcly blocked as anyone could wish. Any ratepayer was welcome to inspect if he doubled the engineer's word. "Oh,"Partington," he said, "that's an old trouble. 1 reported to the Council once about that matter, which was brought to me by Councillors who had listened to the chatter outside. Partington had had some pretty big pay-sheets, but he earned every penny. His average wages for the year were £2 10s (id a week, which worked out at fls 3d a day. No, we can't get a drain-layer, other than Partington, for less than 10s. You've got to remember, too, that this man is called out at" all hours of the night tn attend to various works. Then ho has dtainage work that n lot of our men wouldn't do at any price. ] keep him as an 'urgency' man. whom I can depend on to carry out instructions quickly, which is a great consecration." 1 As for draining the Devon-street hollow, Mr Kendall showed that the wiseacres of the locality had reckoned without their host when they asserted that the sewer at the Govcr-ttill street corner was too high to allow of the service sewer being laid to sufficient dept'n, and that to ensure connection the latter sewer would need to be three feet out of the ground at one point. As a matter of fact, the pipes were three feet beneath the surface at that spot, and he was getting a splendid fall for the sewage. In doing this work he had had to lifi a sewer laid by the previous engineer, for it was now useless. . As for the removal of Mr Hodgson from the waterworks, people who had read the reports of meetings would remember that tiie reorganisation of Hi' staff was done at the instance of the Mayor and Council, under whose direct instructions Mr Kendall was working. The same remark applied to Mr Hooker. He was quite aware that some people laid all this trouble at his door.

As to "docking - ' pay, he explained that under the old system the men engaged on the streets were paid each week for l'/l hours in which they did not work. The engineer's staff, which was then much larger than the foreman's, got no such concession, being paid for actual working-time. When the stall's were amalgamated under him he had either to give the whole of his large stall' a shilling a week for nothing, or insist on the remaining few working every hour for which they were paid. He had had no hesitation in adopting the. latter course, as he would have done had he been paying the wages out of his own pocket. As for the slate of the streets, he had little to say, but he thought they were quite as good as they usually were at this time of the year. This, however, > 'would say. He had asked for a certain "amount of metal. He had got but a small portion of that. If a man wanl-'d to paint a house, and the painter estimated the job at £2O : and if the man got it done for CI. that might be ccoaomv ; but would the paint last '! The street metalling was run very mm 4 on those lines in some municipalities. The " war despatches " referred to his system of issuing all instructions in writing, keeping a duplicate. This system he had found invaluable. In closing, Mr Kendall said that, he would be glad it ratepayers would come to hun for information or Explanations, instead of trusting to the "man ia t«<' street."