THE Thames Advertiser. Favour to none; fear of none; jutice to all. MONDAYf DECEMBER 21, 1896. TWO URGENT NEEDS

Thames Advertiser, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8616, 21 December 1896, Page 2

THE Thames Advertiser. Favour to none; fear of none; jutice to all. MONDAYf DECEMBER 21, 1896. TWO URGENT NEEDS

The Borough Council is keeping the matter of public baths and a recreation ground " Steadily in view," Most old residents acknowledge both as argent needs, and newcomers whose opinion, of course, we do not go'on so much, wonderingly enquire why the town does no*, possess advantages which other places of similar siae in the colony havo and take full pleasuro in, The fact .of being a goldfield town explains almost every thing, The Thames with its people) has been most morcurinl— up to-day and down to-morrow—and when up has been too much occupied to think of whafc may be termed luxuries and when down too much depressed to think of anything butas to when the tide of fortune would again turn. There are minor reasons why a decent recreation ground is not amongst our possessions but the chief is the complexity of early land titles, which gave: Governtnent little chance to reserve the a useful site. Opportunities were c&rtain'y inissed to obtain # central ane 1 a gocd piece of ground but as we have said there wa-j too much uncertainty about the future ; ovor-caufciousiiess by some people or desire to protect the ratepayers' interests by others pre-J dominated over all other considerations. Maybet mm look at the course pursued in another light now and are inelinecl to say that as money was spent on streets and footpaths, for tho convenience of the inhnbi-i tants why should it not have been on a recreation ground, which is almost as much a convenience. A convenience certainly bub not a necessity. Ife is. no use, howo/ver, to conjure up what might have been, Thoughts in such a direction should always bo ruled, "out of order," and wo are almost sorry we have gone into tho pa«fc at all—let us now get practical. We want baths and a recreation are we going to be supplied? The Borough has £350 on account of the latter, but that if? as a drop in tlio ocean so. far as a sufficiency for a purchase is concerned, and we cannot see much prospect of a fiu'tl-op sum being immediately available. If a ground cannot be purchased therefore in the near future, why nob endeavour to build a place up or iifc least make a start, and :f ji* that purpose give every facility to the mining companies to deposit their mullock in a .suitable place on the foreshore. As wo find our town progressing wc will feel disposed to make it a more beautiful -habitation, and perhaps tlio time is not far o!f wlion i monoy can be sjionfc out of reveiiue (o j

push the formation of a retention groundj. on behalf of the people of: the Borough, ahead, We omit ail re* forenco to special borrowing, us we believe it is distasteful to a body of the ratepayers. As for th 6 erection of baths, there seems to be an idea that townspeople will put their hands into their pockets for such an object. Should they do so there will be of course a war rant for fcha Borough to financi*ally assist, in which case our urgent necessities will have every chance of being speedily reduced hy one. ]Tq shall bo glad to hear the Council again on "Recreation ground and public baths."