DEFINITE POLICY URGED

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19340, 2 June 1937, Page 13

DEFINITE POLICY URGED

ROADING IN BOROUGH

KEEPING DOWN THE RATES

MUCH WORK TURNED DOWN

The plotting out of a definite reading policy for a few years ahead was urged upon the Gisborne Borough Council last night, during a discussion of the year’s estimates, when motions were moved to include certain roads for permanent paving which hail been deleted bv the council when it considered the matter in committee last week.

No new works were added to the proposals laid before the council last night, the. majority of members maintaining that the rates were already high enough, although it was agreed that some of the additions proposed were highly desirable.

For instance, the Mayor, Mr. D. TV. Coleman, M.P., agreed that a section of Clifford street should be paved in bitumen, but he said lie, could go to a dozen other places in the borough and say the same thing.

Cr. H. Holmes said Hint the money set aside for bitumen work was very small and he suggested that the council should do at least a portion of Clifford street between McLean street to Fox street. A councillor: And Stout street. Cr. Holmes: And 1 would be in favour of doing Stout street, too. ’The council lias not enough streets down for the staff to do.

<’r. X. 11. Bull: \Ye have enough rail's, ihough. The -Mayor said that to do the Clifford street job properly would cost £ll7O, ami to just put a slab on the top £OOB. The £1176 would mean jd in the £. He agreed that -Clifford street should be done, but. he could go to a dozen other places in the borough and

say the same thing. As much as lie would like to do the work, he could not favour increasing the rates )d in the £ for that. Cr. Bull said that the council had more or less agreed on what should be done and what should not be done, sail if the council was now going to reopen the matter of all streets eliminated, the council might as well discuss the witole estimates. The council would overcome much of the trouble if ii had a definite loading policy laid down for a few years ahead from a survey of the whole borough, and a continual pressing for this street and that street would be obviated. Cr. DeCosta sit id he had been criticised because the Borough Council had bitnmised Clifford street past it is residence, but, lie said, the council had to make n start somewhere, and he was unfortunate enough to be on the spot where the start was made.

The motion to bituminise Clifford st retd was defeated. Cr. P. W. Bushnoll moved that Read’s quay from the Borough Council chambers to Pitt street Ire laid down in bitumen at a cost of £219. The borough engineer, Mr, E. R. Thomas, said that the cost of maintenance would be about twice that of tin ordinary macadam road, and the total maintenance cost of the stretch would bo about £2l a year. The motion to seal the section was defeated.