SLIPS ON ROAD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23220, 18 June 1937, Page 7

SLIPS ON ROAD

DEPUTATION'S COMPLAINT NO OUTLET FOR FARMING COMMUNITY / At the meeting of the Peninsula County Council which was held in Portobello yesterday two representatives of the Papanui farming settlement (Messrs T. J. M'Hutchen and L. Stewart) waited on the council complaining that two slips on the main road to the lighthouse and the Papanui farming settlement had not been cleared and that the road was impassable. " You don't seem to care about the matter at all," Mr M'Hutchen stated, at the conclusion of a spirited reproof directed at the council. Cr J. J. Nyhon: Do you pay rates on Government sections? Mr M'Hutchen: No, we don't; but the Government has given you thoti' sands of pounds for the upkeep of roads, and we get nothing out of it. Cr Nyhon: We won't debate that point in the meantime. How is it that you cannot make a track for yourselves? Cr D. J. P. Robertson said that in his day it had always been the custom for, such communities to make an attempt to help themselves instead of approaching the county council to do the work for them. "We haven't a highway. We have a 'low way ," Mr M'Hutchen retorted. "We have no outlet at all." Cr Nyhon replied that when the community became a rate-paying one, something would be done.

The chairman (Mr Hunter Macandrew), in reply to Mr M'Hutchen's remark that the only thing to do was to shift the slip, said that on the contrary, it should be allowed to dry and a new road then built over the top. Slips had been left as long as six months in the past before the road had been re-formed.

"You never try to help yourselves," Cr Nyhon added. • " You leave it to the county or the Government. You are always going to the Government."

Calling the meeting to order, the chairman said that the council would consider the complaint which Mr M'Hutchen had put before it. "There is a grant, I believe," Mr Macandrew said, " but what it is I cannot say. In the meantime we shall do what we can."