EX-MAYORS’ PROTEST.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18350, 22 August 1929, Page 8

EX-MAYORS’ PROTEST.

Although the new Council has been in office a few months only, it has won for itself the unusual distinction of having been waited on by a deputation of four former occupants of the Mayoral chair. We doubt if any other municipal council in New Zealand has met with such an experience. The four worthy ex-Mayors interviewed the Council to present to the City Fathers the protests of a number of citizens who express disapproval of the site selected by the Council for the muchdiscussed public conveniences. Supported by Mr Walton, con veuer of the meeting of protest, the former Mayors submitted reasons why the Council should not proceed to carry out its considered decision. Unhappily, however, from the outset, the deputation was not placed in proper perspective. Doubtless the Mayor and Council were

delighted to meet four former bearers of the cares of municipal office, but it is regrettable that the new Council was not fully cognisant of past municipal affairs. Obviously it was the duty of Mr Walton in introducing the deputation to have placed the ex-Mayors in the proper setting. If tli is had been done, the least observant residents of the town would have sensed the irony of the whole proceedings. Mr Walton might have reminded the new Mayor and Council that he was accompanied by four highlyesteemed citizens who at various periods in the progress of the borough had presided over the municipal destinies of this fair town. He should have added that each ex-Mayor realised the bewildering nature of the problem confronting the present Mayor and Council; so much so, that three of the estimable citizens making representations to the Council that night, while presiding over the destinies of the municipality for the ten years 1919 to 19d9, had frequently given earnest and serious consideration to the question of a site for public conveniences. And in the days gone by, when the battle of sites threatened to wax loud and fierce, the former Mayors had discovered a simple solution—they had bequeathed the ugly duckling to their successors! The net result has been that for many years the question of sites for public conveniences lias been handed down from generation to generation of Mayors and Councils like a heavily-pressing mortgage on a family estate, until to-day the Mayor and Council faced with an edict from an authority that will tolerate no further delay, are compelled to act or pay the penalty. And now that the Mayor and Council have refused to emulate the procrastination of their predecessors in office, and have taken their courage in both hands and made a decision, the three former Mayors who presided over the municipal affairs of this town in the period of ten years preceding the present regime, have reluctantly emerged from the seclusion of private life to inform the present Mayor and Council that now they are out of office they would gladly decide the battle of sites which each had successfully shelved during his term of office; a decision which they handed on to their successors in office! The irony of the whole proceedings was sensed by one Councillor who rather pointedly asked the deputation if the new Council should emulate the policy of its predecessors in office, and let the matter drift! Unhappily for the Council, and perhaps happily for the good name of the town, the Health authorities have decided to put an end to a policy of procrastination, and the Council must “get things done.”