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Taranaki Daily News, 3 November 1926, Page 8

A LOST OPPORTUNITY. Considerable regret will be felt at the decision of the New Plymouth Borough Council to proceed with the proposal to cut up Mount Eliot reserve into building sections and offer them for lease, instead of reserving the land as a breathing space. Members of the council made light of the recent plebiscite on the proposal undertaken by the Chamber of Commerce and Tourist and Expansion League, but, short of an election, it is hard to conceive a better way of ascertaining the views of ratepayers- In analysing the votes th-e Mayor stated that there were only 641 valid votes in favour of reservation as a park. We presume he meant ratepayers, but at an ordinary poll the ratepayer and his wife are entitled to vote, and had each household received two cards the number would have been double 641, namely 1282 —a very fair proportion of the 4000 on the roll. Sixteen favoured cutting up and leasing the land. Thus we have a decisive majority of 1282 to 32 in favour of retaining the area as a park. One could have hoped that this plain direction would have been followed by the council. At any rate, it could have adopted the suggestions made by a councillor to postpone the actual leasing of the land until the municipal elections next May, when ’ratepayers as a whole would have the opportunity of expressing their opinion in an unmistakable manner. It will doubtless be some weeks before the proposed auction sale of the leases can be held, and to have the matter in abeyance for another six months will not cost the town much in the way of loss of revenue, while it will give the new council ampfe authority for action according to the expressed will of the community. It is not so many years ago that exactly the arguments used in favour of leasing the Mount Eliot reserve were used in favour of utilising the Square in Palmerston North for building sites. Yet that progressive borough would give short shift to-day to any such suggestion. Too much has been made of the alleged cost of keeping the reserve tidy during the next few years, for that is really all that would be necessary, and the extra burden that this would place upon the finances of the borough would never be felt. The council had before it the chance of doing a big thing for the future of the town. It had behind it in support of the project at least as large an expression of opinion as is often sufficient to elect a representative or. carry a loan. Instead of accepting the spacious plan the council has preferred to take the line of obtaining some immediate revenue, the amount of which is very much in doubt, and leaving the future to take care of itself-, It is such decisions which mane the Town Planning Aet of last session of paramount necessity to save, where possible, local authorities from their own laek of vision.