CITY COUNCIL MUDDLING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11619, 5 April 1901, Page 3

CITY COUNCIL MUDDLING.

TO THE EDITOR.

t Sir,—l should like to know if there is any ■possibility of anyone bringing pressure to bear on the City Council so as to wake them up to their responsibilities? In November last Mr. Murdoch McLean wrote a very strong letter, which you becked up by a leader, drawing attention to the Council's want of skilled assistance. This was followed by a letter from Mr. P. A. Vaile, in which he dealt with the matter with characteristic vigour. In his letter, speaking of the standard of intelligence expected of a councillor, he said: "He ought also to know, especially in these days of elaborately scientific sanitation, when the life of the elusive microbo must be hardly worth living, that wooden flmning or open drains through bush and clay country are not the right channels through which to bring a water supply to a modern city. ■•,: . Now, after all these months, a councillor is moving that the Streets Committee be instructed to confer with somebody, because Mr. McKinney says earth conduits are not suitable. The tinkering process, so forcibly foretold by Mr. Vaile, is only beginning. The whole question of Auckland's water supply, and its purity, of which so far I have heard nothing, should be gone into.. To Mr. McKinney's report I notice that h© assumes the correctness of his data up to a certain point. Probably as a stranger, he does not know the danger of doing this in corporation matters. Our'streets are a thorough disgrace to the Council. Wyndham-street is simply shocking, with its myriads of loose stones and its great watercourses. The citizens of Auckland must take some interest in civic affairs, and see that we got an abler and more influential class of men on our City Council, or our civic 'administration will soon be a by-word; indeed, it is perilously near that now.—l am, etc.,

Rossignoi..