NAPIER HARBOR LOAN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2768, 24 March 1910, Page 5

NAPIER HARBOR LOAN.

THE PKOPOSAL DEFEATED

[Per Press Association. | NAPIER, March' 23. A poll ivas held to-day in the Napier Harbor Rating District on the Harbor Board’s proposal to borrow £300,000 for the completion of the breakwater harbor. The voting was as follows: For, 1963 votes, against 1486. As a, threefifths majority was required, the proposal was thus lost by 107 votes. THE REAL OPPOSITION. Writing on Monday, the Napier “Telegraph” said: —The actual opposition to tthe Board’s proposals does not come from any substantial body of opinion at the hack of the- Nelson scheme. This is, outside the minds of a few ardent apostles, as dead as a door nail. If the engineers had not killed it when they twice condemned it, Mr. Napier Boll’s plans showing papa bottom in the inner harbor would have furnished the coup de grace. But certain vested interests are taking shrewd advantage of the Nelson scheme, and hope by its means to spoil the poll, not Because they think his scheme is a good one, or ought to- be tried, or is likely to lie tried, but because they do not wish to see adequate harbor accommodation of any kind. On this aspect of the case Mr Borthwick of the Paki Paki freezing works, told the Hastings people some pertinent truths. It is not only that his firm loses £4OOO a year because the breakwater is not finished —which of course is paid in the end 'by the producer —but if the breakwater were completed freights would come down, in -the proportion represented by his firm’s £4ooo' a year, and much stock that now goes from Hawke’s Bay to Longburn to he killed and frozen would be. dealt with at Tomouna and Paki Paki. The question is not one of the breakwater or Mr Nelson’s scheme, but of the breakwater or nothing. Vested interest hope to see the result “nothing,” and the losses Mr Borthwick speaks of continued indefinitely. Every time friend of the province will follow the advice of men like Mr Ormcnd, Mr Crosse, Mr Watt, Mr McHardy, Mr Borthwick, and many others who are now seeking to further progress as against the pockets of vested interests which want “nothing.”