City Council Offices To Be Extended

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29878, 19 July 1962, Page 12

City Council Offices To Be Extended

Work estimated to cost £35,000 was approved by the City Council last evening to improve the accommodation of the council’s staff and to provide a staff cafeteria. The major work will be a single-storeyed building in the council’s yard to house the traffic department staff, which is at present spread in the main building and in a Worcester street building. Several departments will be moved.

Cr. G. D. Griffiths, an architect, In consultation with the Town Clerk (Mfr C. S. Bowie), prepared the recommendations adopted by the council There would be no doubt about the need for alleviation of conditions in which the staff worked, said Cr. H. P Smith. “This is a very attractive municipal building, and we should be prepared to be satisfied with it for some considerable time,” he said. “I don't share the view that when we build a town hall we should follow up with new municipal offices. “In our planning to extend these buildings perhaps we should be thinking of a fairly long occupancy here, rather than a short occupancy in a new building. “We can't afford to have both the town hall and new administrative offices in the next decade or so.” Resolutions on the council’s books implied that a civic administrative building was bound up with the town hall, said Cr. H. G. Hay, but he did not share that view “The town hall committee

should have its own thinking straight before the adviser comes from Australia,” he said.

Originally, It was envisaged that ultimately the site tor fa town hall should embody provision for extension to include civic administration buildings, said Cr. R. M. Macfarlane. M.P. When a town hall site was chosen there should be sufficient land available for future extensions.

“We should not bar posterity from having the administrative offices with the town hall,’* he said. There had been no major Improvement in the staff accommodation since 1924, said Cr. Griffiths. A staff of 130 had no cafeteria facilities.

Whatever happened over a town hall and civic centre, he had based his thought on the fact that within 15 or 20 years the building would have lost ita efficiency for housing the staff. "The council would still function without us here, but the staff must be adequately housed to do the proper job for the city,” Cr. Griffiths said.