COUNCIL PAPER.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XIII, Issue 704, 24 January 1855, Page 3

COUNCIL PAPER.

Report of the Select Committee on Public Works. The Select Committee appointed to con* sider the Report of the Commissioner of Public Works having met — The Report of the Commissioner of Public Works consists chiefly of a series of valuable suggestions in connection with the departments under his charge, the cost of carrying out which, in the aggregate, is avowedly beyond the immediate means of the settlement ; your Committee, therefore, have selected a few from the recommendations therein contained, which from their importance, or urgency, they conceive to be more especially entitled to notice.

The opening or improving the land communication with the remoter districts, such as Motueka, Massacre Bay, and Wairau (as recommended in the Report), and the promoting the discovery of new and available routes for the more conveniently uniting the outlying districts with the town, appears to your Committee as highly advisable, and as tending greatly to promote the growth and prosperity of the province.

The condition of the crane and jetty at the port appears greatly to require attention, and your Committee deem it indispensable to the public convenience, and even in some measure to the continued mercantile prosperity of the place, that steps should be taken (although involving considerable outlay) for providing for its more suitable accommodation.

The extent and growing importance of the Motueka district appear to warrant your Committee in recommending the provision of a sloping jetty there, as suggested in the Commissioners' Report.

The crossing of the Wairau river having been so recently brought before his Honor the Superintendent, by a resolution of the Council, your Committee will not now recur to the subject.

The necessity of enlarging the Gaol, and its improvement, especially in point of ventilation, appears to your Committee to render the suggestions in the Report on this head particularly worthy of attention.

There are many other suggested improvements, of more or less interest and importance, from which your Committee would select the following, as having a claim for early execution : — The securing the Harbour Road. The erection of new bridges along the Waimea trunk-line — particularly at Stoke, at Ellis's, and at Paterson's. The rendering passable, at all seasons, the road through Maddos's Bush.

Your Committee ia also desirous of expressing an opinion that the public interest would be best consulted by persevering in the course already apparently adopted, that of the construction, in a substantial and permanent manner, of the leading or trunk roads of the settlement, and pushing their formation and improvement with all the expedition that the funds and labour at command may permit.

In order to facilitate a fair apportionment and expenditure of a portion of the funds set apart for Public Works, your Committee would recommend the division of the province into districts, and provision being made for the election of Commissioners in each, into whose hands any monies for the formation of the bye-roads might be placed ; and that the funds thus allotted to each should in general bear some proportion to the respective population of such districts. Such Commissioners would relieve the Road Surveyor of a large portion of his duties, which he complains are at present of too onerous and extensive a nature. But whether after the diminution of his labours the duties still devolving on him would be more than he could fairly bear, your Committee is not prepared to .offer an opinion. And your Committee, while adverting with the greatest satisfaction to the admirable management of the Public Works, and the generally judicious application of the public funds, would still call attention to the detailed account attached to the Commissioners' Report, where in their opinion, in one instance at least, an item of expenditure appears, of an amount with which the resulting good to the community appears scarcely commensurate. J. W. Barnicoat, Chairman.