CONTEST FOR PARKWAYS CONTINUED 201 
conflicting as to the facts. One of the city officials who 
was present at the conference stated for publication the 
next morning: “You can take this as inspired prophecy— 
that Central avenue will never be made a parkway, but 
the commissioners want it to turn over to the trolley com- 
panies for roads to the mountain parks; while Park ave- 
nue will be widened and the entire cost of making it a 
parkway will be borne by owners of abutting property, un- 
less a decided and united stand is taken now by those 
interests, and the commissioners are compelled to take the 
public into their confidence and tell them what they intend 
doing.” 
This and similar public comments were looked upon un- 
favorably as regards the Park Commission. Intimations 
of bad faith were, by the doubting ones, freely expressed. 
The counsel and, by the statements accredited to him, the 
commission itself, were both placed on the defensive. Coun- 
sel Munn soon afterward made a lengthy report of the 
meeting to the commission. 
The gist of it was that he had previously replied to 
the inquiries of Counsel T. A. Davis as to widening the 
avenues: First, that a transfer made under Section 18 of 
the park act did “not alter the status of such avenues as 
existing public highways”; second, did not confer upon the 
Essex County Park Commission the power to widen said 
avenues; or, third, the right to make assessments. That 
“no revolutionary subversion of these avenues has been 
thought possible by the Park Commission,” but, “if at 
any future time it shall be deemed necessary or advisable 
to widen these avenues at any point or place, new and 
different proceedings will have to be instituted under the 
other powers of the park act, and the whole matter will 
then proceed as if this present contemplated action had 
not been taken.” 
The conference, the report stated, was of “a pleasant and 
agreeable character”; also stated that the ordinance pend- 
ing before the Common Council “was unobjectionable in 
form, except for one clause therein”—the restrictive clause 
