Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-01-05
CHARTER CHANCES.
0ld One Printed st Ssns Expsnss
 Win Be RslssatsA to Rear.

If Waterbury gets all it's proposed
 amendments to the city charter the old
 one, which was printed some time ago
 at a big expense, will not be worth
 much. But there appears to be some
 doubt the success of some of the appll- cations, notably the one having refer- ence to permanent tenure in school
 berths, although the pension bill may
 go through all right. There may be some few changes in the method of se-
 lecting the department of education
 which will give the republicans all the advantage that can be guaranteed
 without making things look too lop- sided. The plan all over the state
 where the democrats are likely to win ! out every other year, if not oftener, is to have non-partisan boards, and then fix things so that among the democrats there will always be found one intelli- gent person, and with the aid of this distinguished citizen the republicans will always be in the ascendency. In republican towns the other fellows do not get lGok-in at all.
 The proposed application for the set ting aside of the receipts from one fourth of mill tax on the grand list to be used for park purposes is strong ly opposed by some parties. while oth- CTS think very favorably of it. Ac cording to the present grand list the amount raised from one-fourth of mill would be $12,00O. Of course it would be considerably larger after few years when 1t is expected that the grand list will be twice what it is now. This might lead to abuse, be. cause the sum realized might be more than the city needed or at least in ex- cess of what it could afford to expen1 for that purpose. Of course this could be remedied by another charter amend ment, and if the aldermen don't want to be running to the legislature every year they could take hold of the mat ter now and make the amount one eighth of a mill instead of One-fourth. If enough should not be realized from this for the first two or three years an appropriation could be made in the usual way to meet the deficit.
 There does not appear to be anything unreasonable in the amendments hint ed at by the department of public safe. ty and they are not likely to arouse any opposition. So far nobody except the favored ones know what the char ter makers nave up txeir sleeves, but it Is suspected that the budget will be turned over to the aldermen next MOn- day night, when it is hoped the alder> men will give the public an opportuni ty to see what is aimed at before de, ciding whether the measures are what the people want.
 The biggest move of all comes from private corporation, which seeks to get control of the Naugatuck rive,. Waterbury people claim that this will be taken care of in other valley towns without anybody here turning a hand. They feel confident that 1t will not pass, but they may be deceiving them that they made a big blunder by trust ing to their neighbors. Allan w. Paige knocked it out two years ago simply because the company had failed to ad- vertise, which may or may not have been the result of a mistake. but in any case they guarded against that this time so that Paige will not be able to trip them up so easily as he did be- fore. Nearly everybody you talk with about this would be pleased to see the water used for manufacturing pur- poses, but they don't want Legislation which will deny not only owners of property abutting on the Naugatuck river but the city of Waterbury the right to use the water of that stream in the future. Ii