The San Francisco call., 1898-11-28
SELLING :. CITY PROPERTY
THE INDECENT HASTE HAS AROUSED SUSPICION.
Three Cities Are Anxiously Awaiting '' the Unraveling of the Tangle of the Syndicate Street
 =. Gar System.
. oakland Ofice San Francisco Call, o,o ,,..,l ,l,,-,,- Nov 0T

A scheme involving a million dollars, and q Council on the eve of gong out oi office together form the most important incident interesting the people or OaN- land at this time. The sale of the City Hall site is a big proposition. It Is one +bo+ sboiiId moi be acted upon hastily, and certainly ong that should not De ueteI- ,ntnod without first ascertaining the opinion of the public.
 Director Sohst of the Merchants iIX- change may he: wrong when he estimates the value of the site at million dollars. Councilman Woodward may be wrong y,1,a, he estinates-t 1t at S613 900. The syn dicate of which the Mayor speaks lilaE pe wrong in estimating that S6oo GOO would he a. fair price But there are other facts connected with the scheme directly anu indirectly about which there is no doubt.
 IT Is true that Oakland needs an ade- oIete and modern City Hail. It is true that the city needs a large fpupic park: Ii is true that this Council will go out or office next spring. and equaIiy M yrcead true {te ie self Nor is it any less true, as MT. Gu velIier said last night, that someno" or other there is a very apparent !eetlng lll5.5 ui distrIlst on the part of the public toward the present City Council which IS not di- together unnatural or surprising It IS too late now for this Council to try, DE +bTaa months of death-bed repentance, to blind the public to the acts or the past twenty months
 It cannot be denied that this Council as s fnancier is a huge failure. In its ar ranger1ent Of water rate schedules, even with the assistance given the author or the schedule by the president or one ol the water companies, the figures were so thoroughly unjust to the pubic that they have not vet been enforced. although they became a law last March and could have haen. legally enforced since last July. These rates were declared by six members of the Council to be just and equltap!e, and MT Woodward said that, haNlnS studied the water question for many years he knew what. he was taking about Evidently the water conpanes, who certainly, if they did not suggest the enpointment of NIT. Woodward were heartily in favor of him. did not sum ciently respect these expert Ideas on water rates to carry them out, or elSe which Is perhaps truer, they feared pup Tn anv event this experience with the Council is not: such as to invite pubIc confidence in matter where a sum in the neighborhood of million IS m, Yolved. If such scheme were propose s Gt the close of an adInlnlstratlon m odli Francisco 1t would be at once denounceq as "a final cleanup, but Tn Q@akIan4 @ things are given different names, athousH they smell no sweeter.
 Councilman Cuvelier, who is personally opposed to the sale of the City Hall ste, declares that the proper way to decide the matter is to submit 1t to the people at the next city election, which Is only three months away It would not cost a cent to do this. and would be the practical method of solving the question Oakland will not suffer through not haNlng a new City Hall for three months, and if all Is not straight she will not suffer py waiting as many years. In any event the propo- sitiOn is one that should be carefully watched during it's successive stages by every tax payer ana voter voter +bo m Is raort Gi'g 9 the Merchants Exchange Committee is worth studying.
 Your coInmittee would also draw your at tention to the fact that the City Hall lot which the. city officials are ready to sell for $500 Oe0 is worth S1,000. 600. With Wash sTsst aIa5e vii be Wori s5o COO # synd cate should buy if for $500. GOO they could then ask the city OF the people on Washington street to pay them SlO00OG to open the street. Bus- ness will. be strictly business then. for the prospective value of thaI property is $125O per front foot eighty feet on Fourteenth street and eighty feet on Fifteenth street. One hun dred and sixty. feet running at the above rate viii make 06O0Q Half of that will therefore be very reasonable allowance. Are the peo- pie on Washington street ready to put up that
 Your committee hopes that the people of Oakland will not allow the City Council to sell 6 s20 gold piece for S10-
 The West Oakland Improvement Club has expressed itself on the subject 1t will be land should be served the safne way as San Francisco was aSgragfG to al IuoeTe tbo front portion of their City Hall lots.
 tIs y9S & Ta bn 6v T6 ake be aowed af that
 
 act to be perpetrated. So will the people of Oakland blush in future years if the City Council carries out its intention.
 The man who will be appointed to the general 1nanagenent of the street car line syndicate of this city will have a task not to be enVied.- The situation is Interesting. Until 9 year ago there were half dozen systems, individually managed. and in many Instances running parallel to each other. Competition was so keen that cars ran as fast as they could get out of each others way. The result was that one af- ter another the lines were bankrupted and receivers were appointed. In other words the public was receiving a better service fhan 1t paid for.
 Then came the syndicate. It acquired all the roads and proceeded to formulate one complete system that would pay. Or course this could only be done by strict economy, and economy meant less cars and no parallel lines. This Of course re- suited in long waits. more crOwding and fewer connections at transfer points-in fact. everybody in Oakland. Alameda and Berkeley well knows what it meant At present all is chaos, but through it all there is prospect that the good old times of q year ago may be revived
 STUART ". BOOTH.