THE NEW CORPORATION LOAN OF L75,000.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 897, 10 May 1889, Page 23

THE NEW CORPORATION LOAN OF L 75,000.

ro THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND MAIL. Sir, —The leading aiticle in Wednesday’s Times calls upon those , who oppose the City Council s action in wishing to add to the city-debt a new burden of L75,000,-to indicate some feasible Why? It is the business of the ratepayers to criticise with care and judgment the policy of their municipal representatives, and if after they have weighed it in the balance and found it “wanting,” it is then their duty _to condemn it. It is quite a new doctrine that every ratepayer who finds fault with proposals which seem to him foolish and untimely must propound his own particular remedy. What a delightful medley we should have ! Even such a concrete body as a Parliamentary Opposition would never dream of delivering itself of a new policy until it had criticised and dealt the death-blow lb the-policy of the Government it was opposing. How utterly absurd, therefore, to expect individually from the many hundreds of ratepayers opposed to the City Council on the matter a separate or collective alternative. The position is a very simple one. The City Council tells us that without increasing the rates, they can pay some ; L3soo a year as interest upon a new loan ; and this being stated they propose to spend L 64,500 in certain works which they indicate, and to pay L 10,500 off the existing bank overdraft in relief of the general account. Now, there can be no question that the sanitary protection of the lives of the citizens is the first duty of the municipal authorities. Elaborate town halk and ornamental esplanades add to jbhe look v and the pleasures of a city, but of what value are they to you if, as you walk-along the streets to visit them, you inhale a typhoid, or a diphtheritic microbe from-the ,abominable open gratings -which throw upon the Wellington air day and night, without ceasing, “ the perfumes of Araby,” and your relatives three weeks afterward mourn your lost presence, and the cemetery has a new occupant. I venture to say, after making some diligent inquiry into the present socalled system of drainage, that it is no system at all, that it is a mere makeshift of the worst possible character ; that it is extremely dangerous to the health of the citizens, and that every pound spent in adding to it is literally wasted. I would further say that, even admitting for one moment, for the sake of the argument, that the system was good, the proposed sum of E 15,000 will not grapple in any sense with what is required, and that it practically leaves out a large portion of district now worse off for drainage tHaitany other quarter of the city. Whesn one feels this to be true, and feels alsb~that;,the. fiime has come for dealing with the drainage question in a thorough and exhaustive manner, this makeshift spendthrift fashion of enough for the day is more than unsatisfactory—t is trifling with the lives of the people. I, Could say Something about the utterly crude and unprepared character of the proposals ; of the'fact that neither as regards the Thomdon Recreation Ground, the cemetery, or the Town Hall, have the Council the least idea where they will get the requisite sites or their probable cost, and that the sum set down for these purposes in the loan proposals are mere speculative ideas ; but I have already exhausted your space. I may say this, in conqlaoioh, that ! arp satisfied the more

closely the loan proposals are scrutinised the more they will be condemned. —I am, &e., T. Kennedy Macdonald. May Bth* [We deal with this letter in out leading columns to-day*—Ed.]