THE Temuka Leader. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1892. HARBOR BOARD.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2415, 22 October 1892, Page 2

THE Temuka Leader. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1892. HARBOR BOARD.

Some time ago we published an article in which we held that the action of the Timaru liarbor Board with regard to ordering the new vessel was perfectly illegal. Time has proved that we were perfectly right, and we think we ought to get credit for it. Let us see what has happened since: A letter covering the tenders was received from Mr Darling, and a meeting of the Board referred the whole subject to the Standing Committee. There is no public record of what the Committee did, and so we were driven to get information the best way we could. The facts, so far as we can ascertain them, are these : The Com-

I jnjlUge met, but as some of those who I are opposed to the action of the | majority were present as members o* I it nothing of any importance was done. * ' ♦•He Committee meeting was over aTi- 'i + the Board’s solicitor Mr (jibson too.. t .... r. , . -tead or the into his conhdence, nib. elected representatives of the p.. ’’ and with his assistance drafted a series of resolutions. Jt was not the correct thing for a private member of the Board to consult the solicitor without authority, and so when the chairman arrived in town to attend the Board meeting he, too, interviewed the Board’s solicitor, not as a matter of necessity but as a matter of form. Mr Gibson had done so without authority, and the chairman had to go as a matter of form to put Mr Gibson right. This is the private history of the affair, and it lias no public history because the Standing Committee made no report, and the solicitor gave no written opinion. This is outrageously wrong, but it could not have been avoided. Mr Gibson did not want Messrs Stumbles and Hill, who were members of the Committee, to know what he was doing, so nothing was done ! y the Committee and there was nothing to report. The lawyers opinion would have shown up the conduct of the majority in too ridiculous a light, and so it could not have been given in writing. Instead of the written opinion, and the Standing Committee’s report, Mr Gibson brought forward a series of resolutions, and they were carried by the majority in such a hurry, and with so little discussion or consideration, that when they were read in the minutes of the next meeting Mr Stumbles asserted that he had no recollection of the one authorising the chairman to communicate with Mr Darling by letter or cable. The chairman has since sent Home a cablegram to Mr Darling which cost £22, and has also posted other documents. In the history of representative institutions there is nothing equal to

the action of the majority of the Harbor Board, They think, no doubt, that they ought to be admired for their firmness. Their conduct is

not worthy of the name of firmness. Theirs is obstinacy—a characteristic for which donkeys are proverbially famous. Firmness is honest, honorable, and above board, but who can say the majority of the Harbor Board have acted honorably ? They first started with a vessel to shift shingle. Public opinion became so strong that they thought it necessary to practice deception, and so they discovered that the harbor was silting up. They then decided on getting a dredge and tug combined, and they made the shifting of shingle a small matter.. In fact, in moving the resolution to get the tug and dredge, Mr Gibson put the shingle-shifting on one side, and said he would be glad to render assistance to those opposed to him to devise some means of dealing with the shingle in some other way. They also stipulated in the tenders that the price of the shingle-shifting plant should be kept separate from the tug and dredge, so that it need not be ordered if it was not desired. So plausible was the deception they practiced on their fellow members that Mr Flatman corrected Mr Evans last Board meeting by saying that it was a tug and dredge they were tendering for and not a shingle-shifting vessel.

Considering all this, together with the duplicity of Mr Gibson’s conduct in going behind the Standing Committee to whom the matter was referred secretly to a lawyer, without any authority, we think the whole history of the matter makes up a record of deception and duplicity that is not easily credible. Nothing like it has, to our knowledge, been heard of in connection with a public body before, and we ask the public, Are they going to bow down and submit to such conduct as this ? We may be asked, How can it be prevented ? And we answer there is a way of doing it. Let a meeting be called in Timaru under the presidency of the Mayor, and let the farmers of the district assemble at it, and pass resolutions condemnatory of the board’s action. In addition to this let them collect a sufficient sum to take action in the Supreme Court. The majority of the board think they are perfectly safe now in a legal sense, but we hold that there is sufficient room to doubt it. The majority has not acted in good faith to the minority, the whole thing has not been done as it ought to be done by a public body, or as it is required by law. Let this action be taken, and before the case shall be decided by the Supreme Court the new board will be elected, and that will put an end to it. In the meantime let the Home tenderers be warned that the case is in the Supreme Court, that the district will repudiate the action of the board, and that will settle the whole matter. No tenderer will undertake work while a Supreme Court action is pending. It is alleged that between £60,000 and £70,000 have been already wasted on mistakes by the Timaru Harbor Board ; let us not allow them to add another £20,000 to it while it is possible to stop them.