The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-07-28
syoTuER T4LK ON SPRINKLING. Legality of A yvarding the Contract Dfs-
 cussed Before Special Committee.

1 The special street sprinkling commit
 tee held a meeting in the office of the
 director of public works, Mayor Dris- 1 coll Director Troup and Major Blakes- lee and F. D. Perry of the New Haven
 Street Sprinkling company being pres
 ent. The meeting was held to discuss the legality of awarding to the New 1 Haven Street Sprinkling company the | contract for sprinklng She streets on which car tracks are laid. Bids were advertised for to sprinkle the entire 1 width of the street. The sprinkling act requires that the street railway com panies shall sprinkle the width Of their tracks and two feet outside. In view of this fact Mayor Driscoll holds that the awarding of the contract on bids re-
 ceived under the specifications is ille-
 gal
 Before the committee last night City
 Engineer Kelly stated that the bids were
 for sprinkling the entire street from
 curb to curb, but explained that only
 about tiye-eighths of the cost would fall
 upon the city and that the bid Of the sprinkling company, $S,500, was too high.
 In his opinion $7,000 would be q fair
 price. This would include 10 per cent.
 on $16,OO0, the cost of the sprinkling cars, and 25 per cent. profit to the con- tractors. He said that 15 per cent. profit
 was estimated as a fair profit to the contractors who are doing sprinkling without having been obliged to submit bids He thought that it would cost more to have one contract to sprinkle the city's portion of the street and another to sprinkle the railroad com pany's portion than it would to have only one contract for the entire work, and the city to pay it's share, five-eights of the cost
 Mayor Driscoll said that in some streets where there are contracts there was only a space of about two feet left for the city to sprinkle, and that to sprinkle that narrow space would cost as much as to sprinkle sixteen feet
 MT. Kelly thought that it would re- quire thirteen carts to do the sprinlSling now done by the springling cars and said that at $6 each per day for 120 days the cost would be $9360. He | thought, however, that carts and horses could be hired for $5 per day, which would make the cost about S7,S00. The requested him to submit later an estimate of the cost if the city own ed the carts and horses and also an es innate if the city owned the carts and hired the horses.
 Mayor Driscoll asked Mir. Kelly if he had included in his estimate of fair price for the Street Sprinkling conl- oany's contract the cost of leakage and power. Mir. Kelly replied that he had 1ot, but that these items would be small ones. MT. Perry said that the cost for these two items was $1 BOO per annum
 A letter was read which had been re- ,eived from the Sprinkling company stating that the company had only SUD- posed that the city would pay for that portion of the sDrinkling which the act eouired the city to do.
 In executive session the committee de- ided to request an opinion from the counsel as to the legality of warding the contract under the pro- ,osal for bids. The committee adjourn q subject to the call of the chairman,
 Director Troup stated yesterday af- ernoon that if an agreement was not cached with the Sprinkling company he city would probably purchase carts nd city employees would do the work