HARBOR BOARD MATTERS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2440, 20 December 1892, Page 4

HARBOR BOARD MATTERS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In defiance of the most strenuous opposition the Harbor Board majority have committed the ratepayers to au expenditure of £15,500 for the purchase of a combined tug and dredge. It is impossible to find words sufficiently strong to characterise the conduct of those members who voted for the proposals, but, to Bay the least, their conduct lacks all the elements of straightforwardness and honorable dealing towards those they were elected to represent. They have instead grossly misrepresented the ratepayers and squandered their money with a free and lavish hand. Excuse they have none, unless a ridiculous conception of their own wisdom and judgment, and an equally absurd conception of the ignorance and folly of the ratepayers, can be called one. Some allowance can be made for Mr Teschemaker, as he is not a representative, but merely a nominee sent to fill a vacant chair. But his nomination does not justify his contemptible indifference to ratepayers’ wishes, nor his equally contemptible reference to the three-penny and four-penny ratepayers. It is their money that is being spent, and by every right their voice should be heard in the spending thereof. But no, these models 6f greatness in their infinite wisdom are too infallible to need the guidance of ratepayers or to heed their petitions. It is all very well for Mr Teschemaker to sneer at the two-penny and three-penny ratepayers for opposing this needless expenditure. Is not the widow’s mite equal to the rich man’s gold, and is not the small ratepayer entitled to say how his mite shall be spent 1 E vidently not, according to the absurd reasoning of this bare majority. It is a wise provision of Providence that he has not endowed those who possess a large proportion of wealth with all the wisdom and common sense notwithstanding all that Mr Teschemaker insinuates to the contrary. If all the wisdom of South Canterbury ratepayers is concentrated in the present Harbor Board majority, may Providence help those poor fools whose money they are so foolishly and recklessly squandering away, or at least endow the spenders thereof with a still larger measure of wisdom, so as to enable them to do the harbor district a little good at the same time. With commendable wisdom Messrs Talbot and Gibson abstained from voting for the proposals with an election so near at hand, but in doing so, unfortunately, their duty was but half done—in the interests of ratepayers they should have voted for postponement of the question until after the election of the new board. Mr Acton was surely jesting when he said “ I do not think that nine-tenths of the ratepayers were anymore to be trusted with the absolute decision in this matter than they were to navigate a ship to Sydney,” Mr Acton does not usually jest, and if he said it in earnest, one of two things is abundantly clear, either Mr Acton possesses the conceited judgment of a fool, or the nine-tenths of the ratepayers he so contemptably refers to, possess in no slight degree the ignorance of a multitude of fools. But assuming for the sake of argument the latter contention—surely the nine-tenths are not to be debarred from having a voice in the spending of their money. According to the doctrine of Messrs Acton and Teschemaker ratepayers are simply to sit down with folded hands and witness without sign or protest their money being fooled away in £16,000 lots without any explanation been offered them, unless Mr Acton’s words are one. Such is the unfortunate position the ratepayers occupy through neglect of their duties in not taking a livelier interest in the election of fit and proper representatives to represent them on public bodies. In the present instance the position may be summed up in two sentences: Ist, a Harbor Board, the majority of which are utterly callous and indifferent to the wishes of ratepayers and the requirements of the Harbor Board district; 2nd, a totally unnecessary expenditure of £15,500 of ratepayers’ money in the purchase of a shingle-shifting dredge and tug to act as an ornament for the Timaru harbor, and to be known henceforth as “ The majority’s White Elephant I” On arrival thereof Timaru can lay claim to the possession of a greater variety of curios than any other New Zealand harbor. There is the Titan, sold for £l9B (the price of an old bullock-dray); the Mana, worth probably a trifle more, and sufficient odds and ends to make a good show. And still this wretched accumulation goes on, and ratepayers are expected to everlastingly provide funds, so that an irresponsible majority may possess the doubtful satisfaction of fooling it away on useless objects, and in addition leave to their immediate successors a bare treasury, and the costly maintenance of a real White Elephant.—l am, etc., George J. Wbeathall.