The Press WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1963. Councillors Put On Their Blinkers

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30269, 23 October 1963, Page 12

The Press WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1963. Councillors Put On Their Blinkers

It ignorance is bliss, half of the City Council, and especially the DeputyMayor (Cr. Smith), will be well pleased with their decision to prevent, apparently for the term of the council, the City Engineer from making a preliminary report on the estimated cost of adding fluoride to the city water supply. The public will not share their pleasure. They expect their elected representatives to inform themselves about the administration of the city in a way that ordinary citizens cannot do, especially on a matter of such prime importance to the health of the community, and (as our correspondence columns have shown) of such prime public interest. The council was not asked to make any policy decision, but merely to authorise the engineer’s report on, as the works committee put it, “ the "technical pros and cons” of fluoridation, without which the council should make no decision for or against fluoridation of the water supply. If Cr. Howard's contribution to the debate—“l don't want “any action taken by any- " one ” —is to become the council’s policy, there will be new faces round

the council table after the next election. The debate itself was far from satisfactory. There was the Labour revelation that 1 : the party has none of the; courage and wisdom of the Waimairi County Council and will require its candidates to evade their responsibilities, if elected, by passing a decision on fluoridation to a referendum; there was the unauthorised report on the city’s water supply, distributed to councillors and intended, as Cr. Smith noted, “to be, if anything, anti- “ fluoridation ”; and there was Cr. Pickering’s breach of confidence in disclosing, as if it ■were some misdemeanour, the convictions on fluoridation held by Cr. Guthrey. But Cr. Smith bears a good deal of the responsibility for a deplorable decision by delivering a casting vote in favour of Cr. Howard’s amendment and justifying it by a tradition that a chairman usually gives his casting vote to maintain the status quo. And what was the status quo? he asked. “I can only “ reply that it is an un- “ fluoridated water supply ”. Is it indeed? The status quo is rather an ignorant, uninformed council, and one that prefers to stay that way.