CHAPTER XVIII. 
EXPERIENCES ELSEWHERE AND RECOMMENDATIONS. 
SrincE this history of the Essex County parks was begun, 
I have received various inquiries and requests, if I would 
not, in a concluding chapter, indicate, from my intimate 
knowledge of park affairs, such changes as might be made, 
in the interest of the public and for the good of the parks. 
As this record deals principally with the past, and the 
line is therefore drawn on the course of events mainly to 
the present, I will make here but a brief reference to the 
points covered in these inquiries. I do not, however, hesi- 
tate to express the conviction that there are changes which 
I believe most important, which demand early attention, 
and that should soon be made. 
First ;—Restrictions and further safeguards by statute 
should, in my judgment, be thrown around the present 
method of selecting park commissioners. When the present 
plan of leaving the appointment of commissioners entirely 
to the presiding justice of the Supreme Court was adopted, 
it was confidently expected that the selections from year to 
year to fill this responsible position would be made for 
reasons of special “fitness,” and that other influences in 
the determination of that question would be thus effectually 
eliminated. 
That a different result has obtained, and that this method 
of creating park commissions has been, in its practical 
workings in Essex County, a disappointment to the public, 
is not, I believe, a question of the slightest doubt in the 
mind of any well-informed person on the subject. 
The manifest tendency of the present system, where the 
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