BOWEN STREET TANGLE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 93, 21 April 1931, Page 14

BOWEN STREET TANGLE

(To the Editor.) j Sii;,—Any intelligent-person reading the Tramways Act, 1908, can easily determine for himself or herself whether the City Council can proceed with, the laying of tram tracks'in Boweu street. In May, 1929, the proposal to. Jay tram tracks in that street was vetoed by the votes of the ratepayers, and the Mayor told. a, deputation that the work would not be proceeded with. Tn December, 5930, on the eve of Christmas Eve—the City Council inserted an advertisement in your journal announcing its determination to seek an Order-in-Council to proceed with the layins of tram tracks. This ivas a direct tloutincr of the ratepayers' niandate by the very Mayor and council elected on the same day as the ratepayers turned down the proposal. Within a week, more than three times the required signatures were

appended to a protest . against the proposed action of the council to obtain air authorising order for1 the Bowcu ■ street! tram tracks to be laid. In due time and in proper order, the petition was presented io the City Council. ~IlnU petition point-, od out that -the ratepayers .'-had , voted, against the work, ,aiul'that it should, not' be gone .'on with unless the 'ratepayers had changed .their minds: oh the question. The council had. ..no. authority Id so act. All the "-money, spent-in preparation ior the work has nothing'to do with the matter. Such expenditure only cmphiisihes the wrong methods of tho council_ and_ its determination Io do as it likes in disregard of the expressed will of ihe. ratepayers. Indeed, tlie council's action in tins matter was an attempt to frustrate the will ol the ratepayers. By the delay _caused by legal' examination "of the petition tlin council failed to -forward the petition to the Governor-in-Co'unril within the prescribed time (vide The Tramways Act, 1908).. The council, .or its advisor, is responsible for n,. violation of the requirements of that : Act in not forwarding' Ihe petition as requested .by the ratepayers wlio acted under' c-lluife 12. s-iibrliiusc 13 of the second schedule of the Tramways Act referred to. , There is no necessity to seek a Supreme Court decision. On the facts, and with the Act ' and , the Minister's declaration, given on the'strength of his advisers, it is plain that the. only- course i.s. for (he council to acknowledge its blunders, retrace its steps, and'begin again. As far- as I understand the question of access to the Western Suburbs'has not been discussed by the Wellington Ratepayers' ■Association, and I have no means of ascertaining tlie individual . opinions of its members. With .ratepayers generally, although opposed to all expenditure commercially and economically unsound, the question is not so much one of tram trades in Ijmven street as it is that the judgment and determination of ratepayers concernim: any given question . and their, answer thereto have been disregarded by,the very council, they elected to carry out such determination. —I am, etc., ,1. D. SLKV'WIUGHT.