A STRONG INDICTMENT.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2630, 21 May 1889, Page 2

A STRONG INDICTMENT.

TO TIIK KUITOK. Sin, —W« have a gentleman in Hamilton who delimits in making it known that he is its king or Mayor-maker, and lately he has been named the Bismarck of Hamilton. He takes to the distinction just as a duck takes to the water. He openly boasts that ho is the prime mover of all that lms been done in the Boronsjh for years past, and is being done at the present time. I think he is fairly entitled to the honour, and tho writer does n.it en\y him of it. Let us analyse some cf his achievements. Two baths at a cost of some £500, where one at ii cost of £200 would have been ample ; a large expenditure on a useless dram on the Franktou road ; the borrowing of £(iOOO for erecting public building.-!, which would have been a white elephant and a monument of folly, as those who supported him now admit, £2000 of which has been expended, part to improve the domain lands, and part to pay off the largo overdraft. £4000 is lying in the bank, on which we are losing £40 per annum in interest. He also is in favour of keeping this balance, so that it may be uselessly squandered on some project which will some day be hatched in his brain. We have again, I believe, about £700 of an overdraft. Ho was in favour of erecting abbatoirs at a cost of £1000, which, in all probability, would have been a failure, and a burden upon the rate-payers. He was the cause of £40 being wasted in a law suit, which could have been settled amicably for one fourth of the money. We have sale-yards that are producing no revenue, and so far have been of very little benefit to the town, the interest on which will amount to some £40 per annum. Then there were the retaining of two solicitors at £10 10s per annum, and lastly the taking over of the library, which was then free of debt, with £0 worth of new books purchased and paid for, and a balance of £3, which was handed over to tho Borough. This only occurred a few short mouths ago, since which £20 of the Borough funds have been taken to keep it going, the librarian got his discharge, and it appears to bo in a state of dissolution. Hnw much lunger do tho burgesses mean to allow this state of things to. be continued ? —Yours, &c, BuiWESS.