TAKAPUNA ROADS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20598, 24 June 1930, Page 12

TAKAPUNA ROADS.

Sir, —Your correspondent who stales that "a largo amount of money is being spent on work at Baysv.-ater which is merely ornamental and not of public utility" displays a lamentable ignorance of tho reasons for this long-delayed work. In the first place, the money is the balance of the Marine Terrace loan, and could not lawfully be spent on Walters Hill or elsewhere. Secondly, the money consists largely of a sum reserved as compensation duo to Mrs. Caughey Smith, the owner of the land, now Quinton Park, which was deeply cut into to improve the grado of Marine Terrace. Mrs. CaugheySmith's generous gift of this land has released a sum of approximately £7OO, which has now been spent on work so freely criticised at Takapuna. In effect, the money has como out of Mrs. Smith's pocket, not out of the borough funds. Ihe benefit of tho expenditure has been shared equally by Takapuna and Bayswater people. The former have had the roadway widened to a safer margin for the heavy bus traffic. 'J iie latter can now use the footpath below Quinton Park and not be forced on to the concrete road in wet weather. The battering of the cliff face to prevent further slips was a much cheaper method of preventing the clay bank slipping on to the roadway than tho expensive retaining wall opposite. It is true that an undertaking was given to Mrs. Caughoy-Smith to develop Quinton Park within a reasonable time, and the battering of tho clay bank was made to conform to the scheme that the Beautifying Committee has in hand. It seems that any money spent in Bayswater at all is like a red rag to a bull to many Takapuna people, but" I am confident that no fair-minded person will continue to criticise this expenditure when the facts are clear to him. The sum of £IOO on this year's parks estimates is pitifully smail compared with £BOO spent on Taharoto Park last year. We are not squealing, knowing that times are difficult, but I do appeal for a fairer deal both for Mrs. Caughey-Smith, who gave this valuable land, and for the Beautifving Committee, who are slogging in to make order out of chaos at tho entrance to the borough, and only ask that in return for the rates paid for years by Bayswater people to help develop parks m other parts of the borough, they should now receive a small quid pro quo when Taharoto Park is completed and Quinton Park awaits development-. _ ~ M Blampied. 1 resident Bayswater-Belmont. Progressive Association.