Riccarton seeks pool information

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32539, 24 February 1971, Page 16

Riccarton seeks pool information

Complaints about lack of information on proposals for the swimming pool for the 1974 Commonwealth Games were made at a meeting of the Ricearton Borough Council last evening. Councillors said that all they knew about the matter was what they read in the newspapers.

After a long discussion the council carried a motion put by the Mayor (Mr R. W. J. Harrington) which retiterated the council’s support for the Games and agreed it would send delegates to any meeting called to discuss the pool proposals.

Mr Harrington and Cr R. S. Lester were elected to represent the council at such a meeting. Mr Harrington said he attended a meeting last week where Mr H. C. Blazey, of the Christchurch City Council. put the case for a pool. “But I don’t know where we go on this,” said Mr Harrington. “We have had no requests from the Christchurch City Council to meet with other local bodies. The only' thing I know about it

is what I read in the newspapers.” He said the Waimairi County Council had called a meeting of local bodies for March 11 to discuss matters of metropolitan interest, but he did not know if the pool would be discussed then.

Mr Harrington said it must be made plain that Ricearton was right behind the proposal to have the Games in Christchurch and had been from the beginning, but if the council had been aware that it might have to share in a capital expenditure of s2m for a pool, a figure that had been suggested recently, then the council might not have been so enthusiastic.

Cr R. W. Morris was critical of the lack of information the council had received. He thought that in view of the tight'economic conditions the offer made some time ago by the Dunedin City Council of the Moana Pool and turned down by Christchurch should be accepted. Cr E. J. McAloon said he supported the idea of using Dunedin’s pool but it was clear that the council did not have enough information to work on.

Cr Lester said he would go along with the decision to use Dunedin’s pool but he thought the Games were let to a city and not to a country, thereford the swimming would have to be in Christchurch. Cr J. B. Midgley said he was sure the council would be prepared to commit itself to its share of the $600,000 originally given as the cost of a covered pool but he was not so sure about meeting some of the new costs given.

Cr D. A. Anderson said the Ham site was the most common-sense one because of the large patronage potential from the teachers’ college and the university.