ALBANY STREET SCHOOL SITE.

Evening Star, Issue 19724, 26 November 1927, Page 6

ALBANY STREET SCHOOL SITE.

Ir was to the credit of tho Harbor Board that, by a majority of ono vote, it refused to pass yesterday a motion to tear up tho agreement made by it with the Education Board in respect of a new site for tho Albany Street School. Mr Anderson had given notice of such a motion. In the interval since the last meeting ho had evidently been persuaded either that the board had too much conscience to approve it or that its reputation would suficr too much if it were approved, for ho preferred to propose a very different proposition: “That a delegation interview the Minister of Education (Mr R. A. W.mbt) at once with a view to arranging a change of site.” It was left to Mr Loudon to move, as an amendment, a proposal which was one in effect with the original motion for repudiation, and it was that amendment which was defeated in the crucial division. Another vote would have been cast against it had the chairman of the board, compelled to be absent by his parliamentary duties, been present. The board has saved itself from a decision on which no member of it, we believe, would have been able to look back with any but the most unenviable feelings if it had been passed. There was no doubt about the agreement made between the two boards. It was not the promise of “a site ” which persuaded tho Education Board, reluctantly enough, to give up its claim to a location on Logan Park, and clear tho way for the dedication of that area as a recreation reserve, the construction ot Anzao Highway, and the opening up of Harbor Board lands from which the Harbor Board has benefited. It was the promise of a particular site, the one which the Harbor Board is now unwilling to give up. It was not a case of giving a. site, for no return, to the Education Department, The bargain made in tho first place was for an equal exchange. In return for the site which the Albany Street School now occupies five acres were to be given by the Harbor Board and three leased upon terms which that board itself proposed. If the bargain lias become since an unequal one, through the appreciation in value of tho site which the Harbor Board agreed to hand over, that is not the fault of the Education Board, but the result of the effluxion of time. In main measure it has been tho result of the construction of the highway, which made the Harbor Board’s advantage—or part of its advantage—from the agreement. The agreement could not, with any decency, have been repudiated by one body without the consent of the other at this stage. The argument has been urged by some correspondents in our columns that in such a breach of agreement there would ho no impropriety, because no member of the Harbor Board would have anything to gain by it personally. The Harbor Board and the Education Board, it has been urged in effect, are both bodies concerned, in different capacities, with administration of tho interests of the same community. For either of them, in those circumstances, to repudiate an agreement made with the other would mean no more than a change in public policy, which one of them has as much authority as the other to prescribe. Tho argument is specious, but it is profoundly dangerous. A logical inference from it would be that no agreements made between public bodies, unless the law can compel their observance, need be kept. The only safe basis of public policy must be that agreements, once made, shall be observed until they can be altered with the consent of both parties. It is for public bodies, in such a matter, to set an example to the community. Ihe dispute now between the Education Board and the Harbor Board will be referred to the Education Department to adjust, if it can. That is a much better decision than Mr Loudon s extreme method would have been.