STRATFORD NEWS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XL, Issue 9205, 6 October 1891, Page 2

STRATFORD NEWS.

[FROM OUR RESIDENT AGENT.] October 5. — On Saturday the Council held a special meeting, Messrs Burgess, Mehaffy, Howson, and Paton, being present as a deputation from the Town Board. A lettor was read from the Town Clerk enclosing the correspondence with the Auditor General, and Mr Samuel's opinion thereon. Some members considered that the Council's solicitor's opinion on the legality of the loan proposal would enable the Council to proceed in spite of the hitch in the Town Board's arrangements. It was, however, pointed that the whole thing had rested on the tissumed ability of the Town Board ' to devote its ordinary revenue to the payment of a part of the interest on a loan raised for works on the County road. Tt was then proposed that the loan proposal should be submitted to the ratepayers on the understanding that the Bpecial rate would have to be levied. — The Chairman said he should be sorry to suggest such a thing whilst the rateable value remained so low. .It would be better to postpone, the whole thing until the new valuation was made, the rate then would not appear so crushing. At the present valuation it would have to be somewhere about fourpence in the £, which would give outsiders a very bad impression. A proposal was then made by Mr Burgess that the Council should borrow £800 this year for a start, and do the earthwork and footpaths before next winter. The interest on this could be easily met and next session legislation could perhaps be secured to enable the Town Board to help with the metalling. The proposal, however, did not find favor with the Council, and eventually the discussion of the loan proposals was adjourned sine die. The street improvement scheme may now bo said to have dropped so far as the local bodies aro concerned. The next move will, therefore, have to come from tho ratepayers. I was concerned to road in tho columns of its Stratford contemporary that the Herald had been making political capital out of the East Road, and can easily account for the extreme annoyance with which the editor of the Settler evidently vie»vs this proceeding. No man likes to have his claim jumped, even when that claim, atter yielding well for a time, has ceased to be payable. The attempt too was'particularly inexcusable on the Herald's part, as that journal k not under the necessity of trimming its sails to pleaoe any political leader 01 party. However, as tho East Road has proved so suitable a locality tor the manufacture of political capital, a journal professing Liberal principles should be the last to wish to establish a monopoly of the business. But has not the Minister of Lands the best claim to the proprietorship of this local industry ? Was not its initiation due to him, and did not he work it with much success for his fellow Mac; and above all has he not latterly run ii with even greater success for his opponents? False, vindictive, incompetent, and ex travagant 1 Such is the character of the Ballance Ministry as depicted, not by a member of the Opposition, but by a candid friend, Mr Geo. Hutchison, M.H.R., a mat who claims, probably on very good giounds, to speak as an exponent of true Liberalism. All that we want now is foi the Minister of Lands, who is about to visit the district, to tell us in equallj plain terms what he thinks of the political conduct of Mr G. H. He might also exp'ain a remark he is said to have made to Mr Coutts on the subject of metalling the East Eoad. October 6. — In common with the rest of our citizens, I am exercising those shreds of intellect, which a long residence in the bush has left to me, in trying to find a solution to the great problem of the day — how is the town going to get its footpaths made now that the Board hau been warned off the street ? lam sorry to say that the only conclusion I have come to as yet is one that I am afraid has little practical bearing on the subject. It is that the hon. House of Representatives was drunk when it passed the Town Districts Act 1881. About this I have no doubt whatover ; the evidence is conclusive, and I may here remark in passing that I now understand the frequent allusions in Parliamentary notes to " the overdraught at Bellamy's " (the spelliog is varied, probably from charitable motives). The process of reasoning, which has led me to the above lamentable conclusion, is as thus : What, I asked myself, was the principal object that was sought to be gained by the establishment of town districts ? To put it in another way : What was it that, now that no new town districts can be formed, causes overgrown villages, like Eltham for instances, to clamour for some form of local self government? The answer is short, if not sweet — mud. Where? On the main road in front of the stores, pubs, blacksmith's shop and public hall. The cry of tho storekeeper, the publican, tho blacksmith, and the public goes up to the County Council, and goes up in vain. The Council keeps its twelve foot width of metal in a more or less passable condition, and considers Ub duty done. Now if the object of the establishment of town districts was not to remedy this state of things, what, in the name of all that's incomprehensible, was it? Was it to gratify a burning desire of the storekeepers aforesaid to rate themselves for the purpoee of making boulevards of the back streets ? Was it to enable the publican to spend his license fee in tho provision of public drinking fountains. lam inclined to think otherwise. I will stake a bronze medallion — portrait of Her Most Gracious th; t it was not so. Depend upon it, mud was at the bottom of the Town Districts Act 1881, and it would not have been out of place if tho Town Districts Act 1881, and its framers had been at the bottom of tho mud. The primary, and, in fact, the only sufficient reason for establishing town districts was to enable the inhabitants of small towns to put their streets in better order than a County Councilor Road Board could. The selected wisdom of tho colony passes a measure to effect this object, and ten years afterwards it is discovered that tho whole thing must have been an elaborate practical joke, for the Act contains a clause which prohibits tho very improvements that it was supposed to facilitate.