CITY SURVEY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 4144, 31 May 1875, Page 3

CITY SURVEY.

TO THE EDITOR. " "fi' ■fi Sm—ln a memorial to the City Council, which was presented to me- for signatured few days ago, I discovered an old foe under a, new face. ,

It was praying the Council to apply to the Legislature for an Act to ratify the survey of the City undertaken some years ago by the Corporation, in order to rectify some slight inaccuracy in the measurements of the original survey. To effect this, a point was fixed- in a central part of the city, aud the measurements and fronts of sections laid off from it with mathematical precision of where they ought to liave been. The error was thus accumulated to both ends of the city, resulting, hi the case of Maitland street, of three feet, which distance the proprietors-on the south side were requested to give up to the street, whilst those on the other Side were to advance their properties a like distance on the street line.

If tlie idea is carried out, the boundaries of all city property will be altered, at distances varying from a few inches to three feet, according to their distance from the arbitrarily fixed point laid" down by the Corporation Surveyor, and will involve the pulling down of most of tlie buildings on the main lines of streets to conform to boundaries other than those which the sections were originally purchased by. Tlie Act will have to provide a compulsory landtaking clause, and also one to provide funds for pulling down and re-erecting the buildings. Do tlie ratepayers desire this? I should think a more simple remedy would be to accept the corners of existing blocks as correct, and leave the proprietors to adjust any small error within their respective blocks, which at most was two or three links, anil which, practically, had caused no inconvenience prior to the survey of tlie Corporation, whose misleading points, I fear, have already caused much confusion.

It was quite right for the Corporation to accurately survey the city, but then they should have made the survey conform to tiie existing boundaries of sections occupied according to the original siu-vey pegs, instead of trying to compel proprietors to alter their boundaries to fit in tothe paper plan of the Corporation. I quite sympathise with the object sought for in the memorial, which, I take it, is to remove the present uncertainty; and woidd suggest that the Government be requested to submit the matter to a board of experienced surveyors for then- opinion thereon. —I am, &c, John Cakgiu,.