ROSLYN TRAMWAY EXTENSION.

Evening Star, Issue 10400, 23 August 1897, Page 4

ROSLYN TRAMWAY EXTENSION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —As there appears to be a good deal of misapprehension in regard to the meaning of a demand made by a number of ratepayers asking that a poll should be taken as to whether the Roslyn Borough Council should or should not be permitted to apply to His Excellency the Governor for an authorising order and power to delegate such order to tho Roslyn Tramway Company, Limited, I may state that the Trimway Act of 1894 provides that upon a local authority deciding to apply for such an order it shail publish in a newspaper generally circulating in the district its intention so to do, and that within four weeks after such publication any number of persons not being less than 5 per centum of those whose names are inscribed on the ratepayers’ roll may demand that the question shall be submitted to the decision of the ratepayers. It is then the duty of the chairman of the local authority to forthwith appoint a day, not less than fourteen nor more than twenty-one days after the delivery of such demand, on which a poll of all the ratepayers shall be taken, and the duty of the local authority to appoint a scrutineer, a third of the total number of votes for which voters are inscribed on the ratepayers’ roll making tho poll effective. In connection with this matter, I may say there appears to exist in certain interested quarters the opinion that the course taken by a number of ratepayers should not have been taken, but to those who are aware of what has been lately transpiring it is a matter of little surprise. At last month’s meeting of the Council councillors only had a very short and inadequate notice of the concessions about to be asked for, and although I myself proposed that a special meeting should be held in a fortnight’s time, to enable councillors to make themselves acquainted with the contents of the proposed advertisement, the thing was rushed through by a majority vote of one, without the slightest consideration. The question cf giving the Roslyn Tramway Company, Limited, practically a monopoly of Ross street —which is in all conscience already narrow enough—and of limiting the Roslyn Tramway Company, Limited, to the same terms in regard to fares and hours of running, etc., as those to which the Dunedin and Kaikorai Tramway Company, Limited, are bound, were matters that were left entirely unoensidered, on Mr P. Duncan, the solicitor for the Roslyn Tramway Company, Limited, appearing on their behalf to do a little special pleading. There is no one more anxious than I am that as many means of communication as possible between this borough and the City should be established, nor would I feel disposed to stand in the way of any proposed improvement ; but surely" the first duty of the Council is to safeguard the interests of the ratepayers and make the best possible bargain on their behalf, and this, I contend, has not in this instance been done, and hence I suppose the protest by the ratepayers.

I am in possession of information that is simply astounding as to the means that have been used to coerce and intimidate some of those who were bold erough to sign the demand for a poll, which proves conclusively in my opinion that there are those amongst us to whom no course of action is base or contemptible enough as long as they can manage by such scandalous means to obtain their own ends.—l am, etc., L. Kemnitz. Roslyn, August 23.