Correspondence.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 349, 22 April 1874, Page 2

Correspondence.

THE LAWRENCE TOWN COUNCIL AND THEIR AMATEUR DRAUGHTSMAN. {To tlie Editor.) Sib. — In your report of the Lawrence Town Council meeting, published in your issue of the 15th inst., it is stated that the sum of one guinea was voted to the Town Clerk "for the tracing he supplied of the ground the Council were willing to accept in exchange for the present reserve." Now, Sir, I may inform the Town Council that they could have been supplied with a tracing sufficient for the purpose for half-a-crown, if they had applied to the Government Draughtsman at the Survey office. Moreover, the tracing in question is entirely worthless for any other purpose, than merely for indicating roughly the position of the land referred to. This might easily have been done by a written description, but I suppose a fee of one guinea could hardly have been voted for this. If the above were the only peculiar performance enacted by the Lawrence Town Council of late, it would hardly be worth noticing, but in your issue of to-day I see it stated that at a special meeting of that body, the Public Works Committee actually recommended that the. Town Clerk be entrusted with the preparation of the plans and specificationsfor a bridge in Derwent-street, over the Wetherstones Creek. Ndw the Town Clerk may be, i and I believe he is, a very handy man, but I have yet to -learn that his special forte is the construction of bridges. I have always understood that to be able to make a wheelbarrow, a man must have had a special training for the work, and I very much doubt if any one of the Town Councillors, would allow his coat to be made or even his hair to be cut, by a person not specially trained for performing the work required. So long as amateurs are only entrusted with the prepara-

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tionpt preliminary tracings, no great harm can result, hut when it oomet to making bridges, it v a more •erioua matter. " Every man to his bade " say I, and bridge building is not th« umpUst work in the world. I Snow an insignificant stream in the Province of Wellington, which has baffled all attempts of engineer! hitherto to erect a permanent bridge over it, and this same Wetherstones Greek, has refused to be confined in the abannel cut for it through Wetherstones Slat. ' How I want to know, you know, supposing this bridge should be % failure, will the engineer be mponsible? and if it should require repairing or altering owing to defect,lT« construction, whoi» to pay for it? Of coune,. the Town Clerk may be a Great Genius, and fully equal to the occasion, but if ' eoj why did not the Public Works Committee find it out sooner, and save the expenses of employing Mr. Lawaon for the Town Hall ? .Am a professional man, I think I have a right to express my opinion on these matters, but it Uas a Ratepayer that I claim to be heard, as it is the Ratepayers who have to pay for j . all the«e little experiments. Of course, if the Town Council can get their work done by = amateurs at greatly reduced rates, then there might be the shadow of a lame excuse for so doing, but when a guinea is charged instead of half-»-crown, I for one cannot fathom the mystery.— l enclose my card and remain, yours Ac., Ratepayer. Lawrence, April, 1874.