Garden Strips For Avenue In Dispute

Press, Volume C, Issue 29624, 21 September 1961, Page 14

Garden Strips For Avenue In Dispute

The cost of planting the median strip of Moorhouse avenue from Waltham road to Colombo street remains in dispute between the City Council and the Ministry of Works, acting for the National Roads Board. The board has confirmed its previous decision that the cost and responsibility for planting the median strips are the council’s, and in a letter to the council ’ last evening it said that further work on the medians depended on whether the council was prepared to find the difference in cost, £lBO5. If the council was not prepared to find the difference, the work would proceed in accordance with an original plan using a coloured chip for the sealing over of the islands. “Stoppage of the work is seriously upsetting the works programme of the department, and it is requested that all possible action be taken for an urgent reply by your council,” the letter said.

The City Engineer (Mr E. Somers) said that when the National Roads Board had suggested paving the median strips the council had asked that they should be planted. The reserves committee was prepared to carry out the planting if the National Roads Board cleared out the present paving and replaced it with soil. The board had then said that if the area was planted and no special drainage provision made, the carriage-

ways could be damaged by the percolation of water from the planted areas. The estimate of £lBO5 was for the difference between sealing the strips and providing soil and drainage. “There could be little doubt that planting of the medians would be much more pleasant than paving over the whole width, even if coloured chip is used for the sealing,” Mr Somers said. The council agreed to continue to favour beautification of the strips and to discuss this further with officers of the Ministry of Works.

If the Roads Board was adamant in its attitude, the council might be able to put in flower boxes, said Cr. G. A. G. Connal. Christchurch was known as the Garden City, said the chairman of the reserves committee (Cr. P. J. Skellerup). “We would be neglecting our duty if we did not do something in Moorhouse avenue.”