1886 01 11 Redcar Local Board of Health Meeting

Accreditation the Redcar and Saltburn-by-the-Sea Gazette 16/01/1886

 REDCAR LOCAL BOARD OF HEALTH MEETING
PROSPECTIVE IMPROVEMENTS

          The monthly meeting of the Redcar Local Board was held last Monday (11/01). Mr jno Marwood presided.

          A long discussion arose on the resolution passed at the last meeting to allow Mr Armitage, the Boards Surveyor, a commission of 2 ½ per cent, on the amount expended on the proposed improvement works, and for preparing plans and specifications for remaking the roadway and flagging the footpath on the Esplanade, making the back-streets and superintending the work generally.

          Mr Wynn said there was a considerable amount of misunderstanding in the town on this subject. It was well known that at the meeting held on the 7^th inst, Mr Armitage was asked to perform the work and refused to do so, expressing himself unable even were assistance provided. On this account an advertisement was inserted for a competent engineer and he was very much surprised to see among the applicants a tender from Mr. Armitage, and more surprised to find that his offer was accepted, although some of the others were much less. He moved that the resolution be rescinded.

          The Chairman remarked that Mr Armitage would only receive commission on the new work.

          Mr Wynn thought it was very shabby and wrong of him to come in and take the work after he had once refused.

          Mr Lee said he quite agreed with what Mr Wynn had said, and thought their Surveyor was the proper person to do the work, but after they had advertised, he considered that he had no right to offer his services or tender to any work that the Board wanted doing. In his opinion he had to devote his whole time to the Board’s work, and he was very much surprised to hear that he had tendered. Not one surveyor in a hundred would have allowed them to advertise.

          Mr Hudson said he had heard nothing to convince him that what they had done was wrong and as to what Mr Wynn had said about the other tenders not being considered, that he emphatically denied.

          Mr Lee urged that a very serious objection to the Board borrowing the money was that they were not going to carry out the whole improvements required at once. The best thing for them to do would be to have the plans and specifications made for the whole of the improvements required in the town, and then they would stand to gain the co-operation of the whole of the ratepayers, but at present he was sure that not above two thirds of them would vote for it.

          The Chairman said he was a large property-owner in the town, and he could assure them that he had worked for the benefit of the town, and not for selfish motive. If some alterations were not speedily made he thought they might close the town as a watering place. A vote was taken with the result that Messrs Davidson, Wynn, and Lee voted for the resolution, and Messrs Coulson, Hood, Hudson, Marwood and Brown against. It was therefore lost by two votes.

          Plans and estimates were then submitted, and showed that the entire cost would be £4,034.17s.0d of which £1,953.18s.2d was for private improvements, leaving £2,081.19s.4d to be contributed from the rates.