The Portland daily press., 1883-09-13
More Blunderinc


More Blundering.
As was announced in the PRESS yesterday,
1t has been determined not to repair Com
mereial street this year. This decision has
been arrived at, not by the committee on
streets, which had declined to undertake fin
ishing up the job of the committee on sew
ers, but by the parties who have been urg-
ing strenuously that The work must done
and done Immediately. The reason now al
legged for postponing it is that investigation
shows that hard freeze and thaw are first
needed before the street can be paved to ad-
vantage" Is this sudden discovery? Has
the Mayors old white horse been standing
around there during the whole progress of
this work, notwithstanding to ''Look-
er On''-that the Mayor was himself seeing
to it that the work was properly done, only
to have it discovered at this late day that
the pavement torn up cannot be replaced
until after there has been "a hard freeze and
thaw9' This means of course that the ex-
pense of finishing the work will not be
charged to this years account of the com
mittee on sewers and drains, which is what
there has been great effort to accomplish
in other ways.
While the Mayor was making an effort
to shift a part of the cost of completing
job begun by a Democratic committee upon
a Republican committee, In order to avoid
exposing the fact that his party friends had
managed extravagantly or unintelli-
gently, the necessity of postponing
the work until next summer seems
not to have occurred to him. Is it
not queer, to say the least,, that per-
son who is no "new Importation but who
has spent his life in this climate, should be
SO mistaken concerning the conditions of do
ing such work? 1t was only week before
the discovery that the work could not be
done advantageously this year, that the
Mayor sent formal communication to the
City Council reciting that the street was in
"a bad and dangerous condition." that it
therefore-the committee on streets having
declined to-act became 'the duty of the
Mayor to instruct the street commissioner to
at once take measures to place the street
and sidewalks in perfect order and safe con-
dltion and to proceed at once with the
work." quoting section Is of the ordinances
as his authority for this view of his duty,
although the section contains nothing ap-
plicable to such case. He said further;
The work must be done at once or the responsible
ity Of allowing this portion of Commercial street.
our great thoroughfare, to remain disgrace to our
city must rest with the Council and not upon me-
There is no excuse. The material upon the street.
The Street Commissioner corc4rs in my opinion.
The work should be done before sce hare our fn.t
storms. regret feeling obliged to interfere with
our committees but in this case the emergency has
arisen, and the necessity is urgent that the work
should be Immediately prosecuted and pushed to
completion.
This was the Mayors opinion on the Sd
OF September, and he says it was the Street
Commissioners opinion also. A week after
wards the public is informed that the job
should not be done until after the Fall
storms. Have the conditions of the ground
or the conditions of the climate changed so
much within week as to produce this rev.
olution in the Mayors opinion? 'Looker
On" rushed into print to laud the Mayors
efficiency because he had undertaken in an
irregular way to do something which ought
to be done. Now let him write an
other communication praising him for
backing out.
With due respect for the powers that
be we take leave to say that the ALLEGED rea-
SOL Tor deIay VIII not be accepted be-
cause 1t is not reasonable. If the committee
on sewers has done its work properly SO far,
has filed up the hole made in the street as
1t should have been filed, there is no neces-
sity for waiting for the better part of a
year before the pavement is replaced. It
is entirely practicable to replace the earth
In street excavation so that it will be as
nrm foundation for the pavement as it ev-
er was. 1t can be made better than before
II necessary. Freezing and thawing are
necessary to settle earth in hole only when
the earth used is not of proper kind, or it
has not been properly distributed, packed
and tamped. The reason now given suggests
that the committee on sewers, besides ex-
pending its appropriation without complet-
Ing its work, has made botch of the work
1t has done.