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Show A PROTEST AGAINST THE "SPECIAL COUNSEL" Editor Tribune. Good public policy and common economy both demand that the policy of our City Council with reference to hiring special counsel on every Irrigation, Irri-gation, or quasi-Irrigatlqn, enso that comes up shall be stopped. 1 notice th.u It 1 now proposed to hire extra counsel to defend the suit that is brought against the water bonds. This ls Indeed an extravagant and useless proceeding. pro-ceeding. The City Attorney ls paid a good fal.irv. his assistants are well paid, an able stenographer, offices, books, etc, arr provided, and these men should attend at-tend to thei5 cases without calling "special" "spe-cial" counsel. The Idea ol tho Cltv Attorney that these Irrigation cases cannot be looked into by him and his assistant is unworthy ot the acumen of this worthy officer Certainly ordinary' stamina would require that he or his assistants appear for tho city In all cases whatsoever, ae they are hired for it. It Is error also to suppose that somebody has knowledge of a new case that another cannot and does not possess. pos-sess. I will venture to say that tho City Attorney or his assistants can look up tho defenses and the issues in every one of theso cases Just as well as any so-called so-called specials, and even better In many cases. Besides, this hiring or special counsel on this Irrigation matter has proved to be expensive and improvident to the city. The Jordan-narrows case Is an example of this Tho decreo In that case Is really harmful to the city, and the cltv paid moro for special counsel, attorneys' fees and court fees In that case ten times over than pho 1 Id havo been incurred at all. As a taxpayer I Insist that Iho City Attorneys office take care of these cases, as they can do It without the necessity of reading over ehort former contracts, and If they did have to read those over they could do It quite as well and as Incisively In-cisively as the eo-called "special" counsel. coun-sel. If additional counsel is not capable of reasoning out other matters when they aro presented, they certainly cannot reason rea-son out the city's rights and defenses as well as the City Attorney, and hence it ls folly and wrong to Incur this extra expense. ' 1 trust there w ill Vie enough members of tho City Council that will boo this situation In Its true bearings, and refuse to grant anj' payments or any authority au-thority for any additional counsel In any of these eases Again. It Is a grave question whether. If theso bonds aro Issued, tho money will not bo wasted in an Impracticable attempt to exchange waters. The city Is proposing to give IS per cent jjjore of the Utah lake water than ,lt gets of tho Big Cottonwood water, and In trying to ex-chango ex-chango It Is a very doubtful question, whether they can net nougn water from Vtah lake to do this without affecting the riparian rights of land-ownera on Utah lake- and the big Irrigating mals In tills county, The jx-ojde ot Big Cottonwood, east of the Salt Lake and Jordan canal, will also object to having the water taken out In any large volume above their head-gates head-gates So that In view of these and several sev-eral other questions. It would "be well to have; the practicability of this water scheme and Its legality set right now before be-fore these bonds aro issued and the monej' wasted. If we must havo a greater great-er water supply, and I am In favor of that. It would perhaps bo better for us to buy out a number of water rights of Big Cottonwood, etc , rather than to try to make this Impracticable claim of exchange, ex-change, with all Its possible complications and damages. Yours for the common good. CITIZEN. June 10, 1905. |