The Northern Advocate. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1910. A BOROUGH BY-PRODUCT.

Northern Advocate, 9 December 1910, Page 4

The Northern Advocate. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1910. A BOROUGH BY-PRODUCT.

WHEN the warm and enervating climatic conditions of the North are taken into account, it might be presuming too much to ask the members of the Whangarei Borough Council to undertake more responsibility than the compound arithmetic of monthly finance, for which the meetings have been principally held since the last annual term commenced. The stupeidous and exhausting mental labor involved in this duty must have reduced our councillors' intellectual force to the last place of decimals. But people placed in their position) where the public behest is pre-emin-ent, are called upon to make unusual sacrifices, and that is the ground

upon which we venture to suggest the consideration of another proposition. Since the Mayor states that the next financial year must open with a debit of something over £100, the scheme we have in mind would liquidate that sum, and very likely leave a surplus to credit. There are 'some 14 or 15 miles of streets in the borough, and as there are two sides to every street —a most remarkable fact —we arrive at a total of some thirty miles of bordering.

With small exception, this thirty miles of edging is beautifully embroidered with succulent herbage, having a width ranging from one yard to anything. Why allow this natural and continuous source of revenue to run riot and to waste? Municipal haystacks seem never to have entered into the calculations of councillors which is greatly surprising where such astute and far-seeing gentleman are concerned. We do not offer the idea with any interested motive, or any desire to share as patentees in the monetary benefits; the rights are made over to the Borough Council unreservedly and gratuitously. One thing which may be thought to stand in the way of the profitable character of the scheme is the cpst of mowing ami garnering this harvest of hay. That can be easily overcome, however, l> y the Mayor and councillors doing the work themselves, in the ample leisure time at their disposal between meetings. As a means of physical recreation it would be just the thing for them; and since the mind is much dependent on bodily health, it would help to build up their brain particles and thus augment their mental discernment. Think, too, of the educative object lesson it would be to the burgesses and its moral effect on them. The city fathers would perspire, no doubt, but they would show the burgesses that a Borough Council is really capable of doing some work when it makes its mind up, and the example would be beyond value.