Councillors To Boycott Gas Committee Meeting

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30338, 14 January 1964, Page 13

Councillors To Boycott Gas Committee Meeting

Two Timaru City councillors have advised the Town Clerk (Mr J. A. Goodwin) that they will not be attending a special meeting of the gas committee tomorrow evening because they feel that the matters to be discussed should be dealt with by the council as a whole, and open to both the public and the newspapers.

The councillors, both of whom have strenuously objected to the proposal to reconstruct the gas works at an estimated cost of £lOO,OOO, are Messrs D. R. Dowell and S. R. Bennett.

A joint statement disclosed that the reason why they would not be attending the meeting was that they had received from Mr Goodwin copies of the letters to be considered by the gas committee, communications specifically addressed for the attention of the council, and resulting from a resolution of the council. Explaining that a statement by the Mayor (Mr C. E. Thomson) “that all interested councillors would be welcome . . .” appeared to be a deliberate endeavour to deny the ratepayers and residents of Timaru the right to know on a subject they had shown they were vitally interested in, by conveniently using the gas committee as a device whereby the subject matter contained in the letters could be debated in secret Messrs Dowell and Bennett said that, under the circumstances, they could not associate themselves with the meeting. Surprise Expressed

The decision not to hold a meeting of the full council to debate the matter was commented on recently by the secretary of the Timaru Citizens’ Association’s central committee (Mr J. S. Wilkins), who expressed surprise that the resolutions from the public meeting of protest, which were addressed to the council, should be dealt with by a committee, without first being referretd to it by the full council. . The protest meeting, which was attended by about 300 persons, took exception to the action of the council in denying the ratepayers their democratic right to vote on what burden of debt the council should impose on them, and demanded that those councillors who were not prepared to grant this right be requested to resign. The council was also requested to hold a poll on the question of the £lOO.OOO loan, to make public the full facts leading to its decision, and to produce the reports and recommendations of the council’s chief executive officers on the gas works. The meeting also asked the member of Parliament for Timaru (Sir Basil Arthur) to take up with the Ministers of Finance and Works the case against the council’s application to use the Finance Act to deny ratepayers the right of a poll Comment by Mayor

On December 23, the Mayor commented on the council’s likely action as a result of the protest meeting’s decisions as follows:

“It will be appreciated that we must have an official request, and once we have received that there is no doubt a meeting of the council will be held.”

The Mayor subsequently confirmed that a special meeting of the gas committee would be held on Wednesday night. By seven votes to four the December meeting of the council decided to reconstruct the gas works at an estimated cost of £lOO,OOO. By nine votes to two the council rejected a move to conduct a poll of ratepayers.