Arizona republican., 1909-04-20
THE PUBLIC
 SAYS "N0'! :! Mass Meeting Opposes Pur-
 chase of Sewer SOME VERBAL FIREWORKS .O'Neill Characterizes Pro- posed Purchase as "Hold- Up--Price too High Is the General Opinion,-Cit Will Construct Sewer.
SOME VERBAL FIREWORKS

If the city council follows the rec 1 concentrations of the mass meeting l held last night. as it gave every evi- ! dence of so doing, the city of Phoe- nix will not purchase the present sewer system for $s2,OO0, or for any
 other sum.
 It was the fairly unanimous opinion of the mass meeting, which was held in conjunction with the regular coun- : cil meeting, that the price asked by | the Phoenix Sewer and Drainage company is largely in excess of the | value of the property, and that the system, mainly on account of it's
 shallowness, is entirely inadequate. A motion made by J. c. Adams that
 it was the sense of the meeting, that
 the present system shall not be pur- chased and that a competent engineer shall be appointed to lay out d new | system, was unanimously adopted. Of the three recommendations made by the report Of the sewer committee of | the board of trade the one recOm- mending the appointment of an en- gineer to lay out a new system was approved. The purchase clause was disapproved and no action taken on
 the recommendation that l.. G. Knipe,
 the engineer who gathered much of
 the data for the report, received a compensation of s250.
 No question has come before the council in long time that has | aroused such general interest and at | tracted so large a crowd of tax pay CTS to the council room as the pro posal to purchase the sewer. Several hundred men tried to crowd into n room that has a seating capacity of four score.
 The meeting opened like a Fourth of July morning For a while the air simply sizzled with biting argu- ments and caustic comments, while every few moments Brady O'Neill sent up one of his wit sky-rockets that caused general laughter and withdrew some of the electricity from the atmosphere.
 B. A Fowler, as chairman of the sewer committee was hardly per mitted to finish reading the report before the rhetorical sky rockets, yer bal pin wheels, and hot air balloons 1 went off. The report showed that the system was built 1G years ago for $43,OOO and is now bonded for sS2,0 the price which the city was asked l to pay H. H. McNeil could not un- derstand just where the bonds came | in. After a tilt with Fowler he said, | Somebody issued those bonds and put the money in his jeans, that's
 what I think"
 Eugene Brady O'Neill characterized the purchase of the old system as a step backward into medieval times. J. L. B. Alexander was cheered
 when he made the statement that | this is the only city in the country that charges it's citizens rental for ! the use of a sewer.
 Mayor Coggins opened the meeting
 with a brief history of the sewer is sue which terminated finally in the appointment of a committee consist 1 ing of Roy Goodrich, Joseph Thal- heimer. P. T. Hurley. Dwight B. | Heard. F. J. Bennitt, H. J. McClung and E. A. Fowler as chairman. NIT. | Fowler said that of the seven mem bers. six were tax payers in the sewer district He said that at the start, all of the members except one were somewhat prejudiced against the proposition of purchasing the system, but that the investigations made had converted everyone of them to the belief that the purchase was advisable. He then read the report which was published in The Repub- lican several weeks ago at the time
 it was presented to the council. It
 was the general scheme of the re-
 port to use the present system as unit about which to construct other
 units for the drainage of the entire
 city instead of the small part now under drainage. There are at present
 but 3O7 buildings connected, lowing,
 the report says. 'tU the fact that
 there is no way to compel owners to
 connect with the system of private
 corporation"
 Adams wanted to know if the city could compel connection with a sys-
 tenn owned by the city, but there
 was no definite information on this
 subject.
 It was stated in the report that the system would pay for itself in from five to eight years and at the same
 time the charge to the user would be
 twenty-five per cent less than that
 charged by the company. When the
 reading of the report was done, H.
 H. McNeil said:
 Fowler replied that there had been
 additions made to the system, that
 the property of the company had
 risen in values during these years
 and. as for the bonded indebtedness,
 he did not think it was within the
 province of the committee to inquire
 into that
 McNeil then intimated that the
 stock was watered and that the
 money would be found in somebody's
 jeans.
 J. C. Adams then stepped out into
 the fo rumanindsdai te ?lpocketed--
 the forum and said in part: 'Not
 one foot of land will get more sew
 craze or better se"erage by spending