The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1921. LAST NIGHT’S MEETING.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 September 1921, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1921. LAST NIGHT’S MEETING.

The resolutions carried almost unanimously at last night’s largely-attended meeting of New Plymouth ratepayers, in connection with hydro-electricity, urging the council .to have a survey made of the upper reaches of the Mangamahoe basin, with a view to ascertaining the extent of the additional power that can be generated there in the future, and to proceed immediately with the enlargement of No. 2 tunnel, are ample justification for the action 'taken by representative men of the town in urging this course upon the council. The consulting engineer (Mr. Blair Mason) put the position frankly and fully before the meeting, and satisfied those present that the recommendation he had made to the council, and which was warmly supported by the town manager, should be carried out in the interests of the district as well as the borough. The Mayor realised that the council and himself were, in. a way, on their trial, and made the best of a bad case. It was rather unfortunate that in doing so he should have, wittingly or unwittingly, misrepresented the position over the increase in the cost of the present works and the finance generally, but Mr. Burgess and others put this right and did justice to the engineers, so that the meeting was fully seised .of the facts of the position by the time the motions ' were put. We do not know what action the council will now take, but certainly it cannot ignore what is really a mandate from the ratepayers. It is to be regretted that -this trouble lias arisen, for New Plymouth has always in the past been united over hydroelectric but it has been the council’s —or, perhaps we should say, the Mayor’s—own making in stubbornly ignoring the advice which had been persistently tendered by those who manifestly had no oUier desire than to conserve and promote the irutereists of the town and district, and who could see that the council’s policy must lead to trouble and probably disaster. Some of the speakers were careful to show that the carrying of the resolutions did not necessarily mean a lack of confidence in the Mayor and councillors who voted with him, but it may certainly be claimed that the resolutions directly condemn the policy they have followed over hydro-electric matters. We are forced to the conclusion that New Plymouth will, the way things are going, shortly lose its chief administrative officers. Better by far could the Mayor and some of the councillors be spared. There is no need to say more. ,