Napier City Fathers.

Manawatu Standard, Volume 4, Issue 107, 13 April 1883, Page 3

Napier City Fathers.

[ Napier Telegraph . ] Our space will not allow us to give anything like a full report of the proceedings m the Municipal Council last night. There was, however, very little real business done, although the meeting lasted for more than four hours. If the councillors would talk less and work more borough affairs would, perhaps, have escaped i he state of muddle into which they have drifted. But some of the " City Fathers " act m the Council as though' their special mission was not so much to attend to public business as to criticise their fellow councillors. One councillor is to arother what a red rag is to a bull, and the consequence is that more than half the time of the Council is taken up m puerile personalities. There is no cohesion, so to speak, m the Council, every member taking a perfectly independent course, his augularities preventing any junction with another; The reason why decisions are arrived at is that the questions to which they relate may be shelved and got rid of, to which end sides are taken and the matter dis» posed of.. There is no friendliness of feeling m such an arrangement, nor probably any sense of conviction that the vote so given is a right one. The fact is, every councillor hates with a most refreshing degree of hatred every other councillor. Under these circumstarces there is net, nor can there be, any unity of purpose m the prosecution of any particular course, and a councillor desiring to lead m a well-defined direct. on is regarded as an inso'ent usurper of another man's claim. Thus next to nothing is done, and a councillor to think that he can serve any good object m remaining m the Council must be a very sanguine individual.