PERMANENT STREET LEVELS.

Waipa Post, Volume I, Issue 17, 13 June 1911, Page 2

PERMANENT STREET LEVELS.

(to the editor.)

SIR, —In writing on the above subject I am possibly proving once again that “fools rush in where Town Boards and other angels fear to tread,” yet one scarcely needs any special or even ordinary engineering qualifications to see the urgent necessity for, and the advantages accruing from, the fixing of the permanent levels of our streets. It has to be done. Why not now ? the longer it is put off the greaterboth the difficulties and the cost will become. We all sympathise with the members of the Board in the hampered state of the Board’s finances, arid fully appreciate their efforts to make the best of things, but would it not be better, and in the end cheaper, to make the fixing of the permanent levels of our streets the first plank in their platform. A movement in that direction will meet with the approval of every fair-minded ratepayer. The objection that we cannot afford it is nonsense. We can better afford it to-day than to-morrow, for every day sees the cost and the difficulties increasing. The logical consideration of the cost of anything must include the value of the ultimate advantages, and not the least of the advantages in having our street levels fixed is the effect it will have, and is having, not only upon the local capitalists who are“switheri(ng ” about building muchheeded business sices (five businesses which would have opened here during the past six months have had to pass on through inability to secure premises), but also the many —and there are many —who quietly come to “ spy out the land ” and as quietly steal away and settle somewhere • else if they find we are working on narrow lines. It is the ratepayers’ duty to shake up and stand by the Town Board in this matter. We say we want ourtown and district -to progress, but do we really mean it while we forget that depends more than Anything on our own confidence in its possibilities? We may not be crying “ stinking fish” but there area , lot of us thinking it pretty hard. I even heard a man, or rather a ratepayer, speaking sneeringly of the Board’s action in in the direction of a water supply. I felt sorry for him, but of course that didn’t hurt him because he’s the sort of chap that feels sorry for everybody but himself. I’d like to buy him a single ticket for the Chathams. May I ask for your opinion on the matter, MiEditor? —the street levels, of course, not the Chathams. —I am etc., HOICI.