✨ Address of the Superintendent
NELSON GOVERNMENT GAZETTE. 53
has lately been constructed at Port Chalmers, leads
me to think it desirable to amend the "Patent Slip
or Dry Dock Act" of 1867, so as to enable me to
guarantee interest for a term of years upon the much
smaller amount of capital which would be required
for a Floating Dock.
- Although the now Hospital in this city has now
long been completed, I have deferred its occupation
until you should have an opportunity of expressing
your opinion on the subject. The number of patients
in the present Hospital is now, and has for a long
time past been, so small, that I have been unwilling
to incur the greatly increased expense which I fear so
large an establishment, so utterly disproportioned to
our present wants, would entail upon the Province.
I have also thought it desirable, in the absence as
it appears to me of any necessity for its immediate
application to the purpose for which it was built, to
keep the new building unoccupied in view of a pro-
bability—not, I fear, in the present state of the
North Island a very remote one—of accommodation
being required for women and children whom it
might be considered necessary to remove from Tara-
naki or Wanganui, and place under our care, as
was the case eight years ago.
-
The building of the old Hospital being still
occupied by patients, I have abandoned, for the
present at all events, my intention to convert it into
a home for destitute children. Arrangements have,
however, been made for their maintenance and edu-
cation at Motueka, which, unless the number of
children to be provided for should greatly increase,
will I think prove more satisfactory and less expen-
sive than those I contemplated last year. -
A bill has been prepared for your considera-
tion to repeal the various existing Representation
Acts, in order to reduce the number of members
forming your Body from twenty-six to nineteen. The
number of members representing the goldfields has
not been interfered with, the proposed reductions
being confined to the more settled parts of the Pro-
vince, so that the influence of the Goldfields members
in your counsels will be greatly increased, while, by
the formation of the new Electoral District of
Charleston, the various interests of the West Coast
will be more distinctly represented.
I think that if you should see fit to pass this mea-
sure into law it will tend materially to diminish the
length, and consequently to reduce the cost, of your
sittings, without interfering with your usefulness to
the Province.
- For full details of the various public works
which have been executed during the year, I refer
you to the able reports of the Provincial and District
Engineers, and for information as to the present
state and prospects of the Goldfields to those of the
Wardens of the different districts.
I now declare this Council opened for the despatch
of business.
OSWALD CURTIS,
Superintendent.
Printed under the authority of the Provincial Government of the Province of Nelson, by NATION and LUCKIE, Waimea-street,
Nelson, Printers for the time being to the said Government.
Nelson Provincial Gazette 1869, No 19
✨ LLM interpretation of page content
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Address of the Superintendent to the Provincial Council
(continued from previous page)
🏘️ Provincial & Local Government27 April 1869
Provincial Council, Superintendent, Nelson, Estimates, Retrenchment, Goldfields, Public Works, Railway, Brunner Coal Mine, Hospital, Representation Acts, Charleston
- Oswald Curtis, Superintendent