OUR TREELESSNESS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1797, 15 August 1906, Page 69

OUR TREELESSNESS.

THE RESERVES REVENUES. HOW THE TOWN BELT IS ROBBED. A few days ago we referred to the treelessness of the Town Belt, and to the unornamented condition of the higher part of the Botanical Gardens. We 'pointed out that the efforts of the City Council's Reserves Committee are practically concentrated on the geometrical multi-coloured lower fragment of the Botanical Gardens; on Newtown Park (which is, no doubt, a part of the Town Belt); on the Basin Reserve; on what was known as the Canal Reserve (now the Kent Terrace Avenue); on the Newtown library grounds, and various pocket-handkerchief reserves about the flat part of the city. We argued that whatever credit may or may not attach to the fantastic carpet bedding and such like on the flat, the city’s reserves administration had no genius for a hillside. Aud we instanced the variegated lower end of the gardens and their naked uplands as epitomising the limitations of the committee’s policy. STATUTORY LIMITATIONS. The fact is that the trees are being neglected for the sake of the flowers, the hills foa* the flats, "the whole for a few parts. There should he a different allocation of funds to do more justice to the Town Belt. The funds expended by the committee last year totalled £3678 19s 9d. This sum was made up of rentals from reserves, £739 6s 9d ( (rent of Town Belt leases £638 Is 3d, hire of Basin Reserve £lOl 5s 6d) and the balance, £2939 13s. from the Council’s general funds. The Town Belt and Basin Reserve revenue id therefore barely one-fifth of the total receipts ; it would not nearly meet the expendi-

ture either on the Botanical Gardens taken separately, or on the other reserves excluding the gardens. As to the expenditure of this revenue fnom reserves, there are certain statutory limitations in the Wellington City Reserves Acts of 1871 and 1872, and in the Botanical Gardens Vesting Act, 1891. These appear to be to the following effect: That three-sixths of the moneys derived from the Town Belt and the Basin and Canal Reserves shall be devoted to the construction and maintenance of roads over the Town Belt connecting with country reads, and of the road from Kent terrace round Clyde Quay and Oriental Bay to the old city boundary (that is, the former tramway terminus); that twosixths shall be devoted to the ornamentation and utilisation of the Town Belt and the Basin and Canal Reserves (not including the Botanical Gardens); and that one-sixth shall be devoted to the ornamentation and utilisation of

the Botanical Gardens, a portion whereof the Council is compelled to maintain as a “botanic garden.” PAST INJUSTICE.

Sb far as can be ascertained, tbe City Council has obeyed these’ statutory allocations only with respect to the one-sixth paid over to the Botanical Gardens. In the 1904-05 balance-sheet there appears, as a transfer from the City Reserves Account to the Botanical Gardens account', a sum of £lO6 19s 7d, which may reasonably be identified as that sixth. We can find, no trace of any allocation of the threesixths to the connecting roads over the Town Belt —there might be four of these roads all told!—or to the Oriental Bay road; and in that respect the acts seem to have been a dead letter. It is not the present purpose however, to labour this point, even if what seems to be the law_ has been broken. The Immediate object is to show that the Council has treated fivesixths of the reserves revenue as being practically free from restriction. As to the two-sixths dedicate to the Town Belt and Basin and Canal reserves, the committee would probably say that, at the present day, this proportion and much more is represented by the expenditure on Newtown Park as a part of the Town Belt, on the Basin and on the Canal or Kent terrace reserve. 'And that, at the present day, is no doubt true, the Town Belt grazing lease rents having, so dwindled. But during the. earlier part of the thirty odd years that the Town Belt has been paying rents, the expenditure of. which is no doubt- un.traoeable now, it is morally certain that it did nob get back its fair share, even counting the whole expenditure on Newtown Park and the Basin and Canal reserves. Nor Is it clear that the whole of that expenditure is fairly chargeable, for is the creation of two cricket grounds-the sort of “ornamentation and utilisation” that the- acts contemplated ? All that the Town Belt seems to have got in that period is the Newtown Park, Queen’s Park, and the Nairn street and Pirie street plantations. And the rents were greater then. In fact, it is neglect that has caused their dwindling. A MORAL CLAIM. Rutting on one side the illegal robbery> of past years, there remains the question whether a system of robbery—from the moral, if not the legal standpoint—is not being perpetuated to-day. Though the revenue from reserves is

only one-fifth of the expenditure on all reserves, five-sixths of what there is of it comes from the Town Belt. It has been contended, on legal grounds, that the acts require that the revenue which they dedicate to the Town Belt shall be expended, not merely on one portion of the Town Belt, such as Newtown Park, but on each and all those parts of it which contribute to the revenue. This, if not a statutory, is at least an honourable obligation, on the Gouncil. Is it right that lands from which the city has been getting rent for thirty odd years should receive nothing in return? Are we doing ourselves justice when we leave these areas naked and a reproach, and crowd all our money into two or three spots? Does not a moral claim ariso out of the past—out of the policy of neglect which led to growth of gorse, deterioration, and the inevitable decrease in rental value? It is said that at one time the annual rentals were worth not £6OO to £BOO, hut £2OOO ; it would now take about that sum to get the gorse off them. The Botanical Gardens gets ita statutory one-sixth of the revenue of the other reserves. Is it not time that the other five-sixths were put back into the lands which contribute the money? LOCALISE THE REVENUE. It will be objected that the revenue is so small that it will be useless unless it is concentrated in a few spots. The answer is that it is so small that it is a bagatelle in the gardening operations of a staff which was able last year to spend over £IOOO round about the bottom part of the Botanical Gardens ♦without doing anything to the top. If present methods of expenditure are to be maintained, and no doubt a “ botanic garden ” whatever that may be—must by act- be maintained, the Council might as well do the whole out of the general funds; for the small proportion of reserves revenue would scarcely be-missed. But it would not be small if applied to the cheaper and more useful purpose of tree-planting. Why not set aside a considerable area- of the Town Belt leases, allow the rentals to accumulate for' two or three years, then take a part of the land, fence it off, and plant it out of the accumulated fund ?- In time, other sections could bo taken in hand, and six or seven years after planting,, the city would have plantations costing nothing for upkeep-—a durable asset as an offset to the transitory glories of the geometrical plants. The process would be gradual, perhaps slow; but it would grow on its own basis, and qven small beginnings are preferable to perpetual neglect. And here might come in another factor —tho Wellington Tree-planting and Scenery Preservation Society, a body which has no leasehold rentals or general city fund to support it, but which finances itself on public subscriptions and on occasional assistance from the City Council, equal in tho past two years to about £25 a year. The society has planted some eight or nine reserves, but two of them, after an expenditure of £250, were taken away for public purposes and destroyed. The society employs a gardener to look after its other reserves, and though they amount only to a drop in the bucket, it does creditable work for a voluntary body without an assured finance. Should the Reserves Committee’s staff not care about the "undertaking of planting the Town Belt by instalments, paid for out of localised revenue, then no doubt the society would be only too glad to take over areas of the Belt- ou those terms. That we should be spending over £3500 a year on reserves, and that the Town Belt should remain as it is, constitutes a stigana on tlie citizenship of Wellington,