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Show MAYOR TO MAKE STATEMENT t AT MEETING Of THE CITY COMMISSIONERS TONIGHT I All citizens Interested in Mayor Abbot Ab-bot R Heywood's paving program, es pecially in that proposed for District 125. or in the mayor's alleged previous relation- with the J. P. O'Neill Construction Con-struction company, are Invited to attend at-tend a special meeting of the city com-j com-j mission at the mayor's office at 7:30 ' o'clock tonight. The. mayor stated today that he would have something Interesting to say regarding statements by Mrs. I Mary H. Geiger in The Standard of I yesterday, and something especially regarding his ownership of the corner cor-ner of Washington avenue and Twenty Twen-ty fifth street The mayor was assured by a repre-I repre-I sentative of The Standard that the col-i col-i umns of the paper were wide open to him at all times; that the paper was serving honestly as spokesman for the people, in the interest of the public pub-lic good; that everyone was entitled to a hearing on matters involved In the public welfare. The mayor replied that he would not avail himself of The Standard's offer of-fer today, but that he ould make a public statement tonight. Denies Implied Charge. In the course of a friendly conversation conver-sation with three newspaper men the mayor said he was doing his level best for honest public improvement; that he never, at an firm . directly or in-dirertly, in-dirertly, profited a half penny from any kind of public improvement contract; con-tract; that in his position he would have been foolish "to have a hole of that kind In his armor;" that the Twenty-fifth street paving was protested protest-ed the same way, but he won and the palng will proceed when cold weather breaks; that the paving of Lincoln avenue ave-nue could have been halted by use of the same methods; that, his paving plan was to have five through avenues, ave-nues, these being Madison, Jefferson, Adams, Washington and Lincoln, filling fill-ing in, as soon as possible, the short connecting street; that the street car company also had a definite plan which did not include West Twenty-eighth Twenty-eighth street, and would, under the law, pave its share of all streets occupied oc-cupied by its tracks, that the city now has less than nine miles of hard-surface hard-surface paving and 191. 28 miles of streets, that no city in the mtermoun-tain mtermoun-tain country has so low a percentage of paved streets and his sole aim has i been, in behalf of the people, to establish es-tablish a definite plan of street improvement im-provement and start the city properly upon Its high road to greatness. The Mayor said that If the protests of District 125 were heeded, the Third ward sewer propect might mave to be abandoned, as well as otner forward-loking forward-loking projects Mr. O'Neill's Statement. John P. O'Neill stated this after- I noon: "Mayor Heywood has noming to do with my company, directly or indirectly. He purchased five, shares of my stock ($500) and became our' treasurer, because he was then at the Commercial National bank, where we had our accounts, when tlie company was incorporated at Salt Lake in j ' 1906. Wo had banked at the Commer-' ial National for ten or twelve years pre lous to that time. Mr. Heywood i was our treasurer and banker until November 7. 1910, when he complete, ly severed his relations uith the corporation. cor-poration. We settled our account with the Commercial National and trans-feircd trans-feircd our banking business to the: First National bank of Ogden. "Ever since that time, seven years ago, Mr. Haywood ami myself have been merely friends, without any kind of business relations with each other. In connection with Ogden and Salt Lake firms, my company obtained the street paving contracts under both the Fell and the Heywood administrations 1 and in every case, except one, wo were I the lowest bidder The exception was, during the Fell administration, when we obtained the contract for one block of paving on Twenty -fourth street and our bid was about $100 higher than the lowest. In that case the property owners requested the commissioners to award the. contract to us, which they did." Mr. O'Neill said he did not object In any way to the Standard s policy of wide-open publicity to all sides concerning con-cerning all matters involving the public pub-lic welfare; that it were best, in his opinion, to let the people hear all sides of a question and thus be able to get I at the right and wrong of thing. He said he was in favor of unrestricted publicity in every such controversy, relying upon the good sense of the people peo-ple to arrive at a fair and impartial decision |