The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. GISBORNE, MAY 31, 1902.

Gisborne Times, Volume VII, Issue 430, 31 May 1902, Page 2

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. GISBORNE, MAY 31, 1902.

AN EXTRAORDINARY POSITION. The County Council yesterday found itself in an extraordinary position and an extraordinary way out of the difiiculty was found. The desperate step of discharging the road maintenance men just when the winter season had set in was enough to strike dismay in the hearts of many back-block settlers, whose means of ingress and egress may be blocked any day by slips. But the action of the Council in voting a sum of .£SO for the Coronation celebrations or rather the commemoration, was indeed, in view of the extreme step of dismissing the maintenance men, an illadvised step, and one that is naturally calculated to cause a good deal of grumbling among ratepayers. It is all very well for the Council to be liberal at a time when it is well supplied with funds, but in the self-confessed impecunious condition that now prevails the Council has a need to exercise ’ restraint. The straightforward answer that the Council should have given to the request for funds in aid of the Coronation memento was that 110 funds were available. A body which cannot keep its staff of maintenance men on for the winter months has cer-

tainly no tight to vote away money for suen purposes as the Coronation commemoration. It should he quite sufficient commemoration for that body to he placed in such straits in regard to its roads. We are sure that I! the CoMicillots had given the matter more consideration they would have acted differently. It is too late now to withdraw from the position taken up, and we hope that, bad as the Council's position now js, it will soon regain the sound state of finance that everybody would wish to see it possess/