Harbour Affairs Print E-mail
The Whitehaven News - September 7, 1905

HARBOUR AFFAIRS.


       There is a delay in the delivery of the dock gates at Whitehaven. It
will be a month longer at least before they can be erected. There is no penalty
clause in the contract. The Board was advised that they had a common law
remedy as equally as good, without penalty clause. This was the effect of the
information about the dock gates contract. The advice about a common law remedy
seems strange. In the case of a penalty clause there is no question about the
cause of any delay; for that does not matter. But in the absence of a penalty
clause the question of reasonable default at once arises;  and as a matter of
fact in this very case Mr. PEARSON thinks "it is only fair to the makers of the
gates to state that the delay has been owing to subcontractors for castings.

       Most people would probably prefer the insertion of a penalty clause.
It is easy for the Board to say that they hold a contractor liable for damages,
but it is not easy to prove the liability and the damages if it is required
to do so; in the absence of a penalty clause. It is more satisfactory to learn
that for the future it will be possible without difficulty to periodically
examine the condition of the dock gates and entrance, at spring tides, without
the expensive services of a diver.

       For the second time lately, in regard to the question of the letting
of the Town Hall property, the Harbour Board was asked to dispose of business
not directly put before it. Ald. HASTWELL referred to this matter as one of
convenience. There is more in it than that. There is a very large possible
loop-hole for irregularity. The Board was asked to confirm the minutes of the
General Purposes Committee, which simply confirmed the minutes of other committees,
the property and Machinery Committee, confirmed the minutes of a
sub-committee, number so and so. There was no printed minute of the proceedings of the
sub-committee. There was a minute in the minute book, identified by the number;
but any member of the Board not on the sub-committee, not on the Property and
Machinery Committee, and who was not present at the meeting of the General
Purposes Committee, would have no knowledge what was referred to.

       Undoubtedly the regular and safe way to do is either not print minutes
at all, but read them, or to print them all and take them as read. Otherwise
this fictitious way of doing business by a General Purposes Committee, the
object of which is to obviate public discussion, might conceivably lend itself to
undesirable results.

       We agree with Ald HASTWELL that the system requires reconsideration.


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