BOROUGH COUNCIL COMMITTEES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9090, 15 May 1908, Page 4

BOROUGH COUNCIL COMMITTEES.

On Saturday morning last we took occasion to question the wisdom of the Borough Council on its' manner

of reconstructing the council committees. We pointed out that the construction of large committees was a mistake; and that, instead of facilitating business, they were apt to retard it. The Council is apparently coming to this conclusion too, far at the next meeting, which was on Tuesday night, a sub-committee, consisting of Cr3 Ewington, Elliott and Hunter, was appointed to manage the Park. This step, although a small one, is certainly in the right direction, but it would have been infinitely bettor for the working of the Council if two names had been added, and a separate Park and Library Committee formed. Probably in the course of time several offshoots of sub-committees will be appointed to relieve the strain and worry of the present large committee, and then, when these have become completely "tangled," the Council will settle down to reason, and form committees in the way they should have done at first. The Mayor's original proposal was for three committees in the Council to embrace works and finance, gas and abattoir, and park and library. It was a sound and business-like proposition; and, a3 we have already stated, it would, in our opinion, be the best method of reconstruction.

It would appear that there is not as much discrimination exercised by the prison -authorities as there might be, in the selection of prisoners for the tree-planting camps. Recently a'convict named Easton escaped from the camp at Waiotapu, and was not recaptured for some days. It transpired that the man had been convicted of the crime of attempted robbery under anrs, and there, was naturally a gojd deal of anxiety among the settlers in the neighbourhood while the prisoner was at large. One would imagine that a convict of this stamp would be retained in an ordinary prison where he could be carefully guarded. To send such a man out to a tree-planting camp, from which he would have ample facilities for escape, and to which only prisoners of the mildest type should be consigned, shows that there is something wrong in the matter of prison classification, and that amendment is urgently needed in the method of selection.