PLAN" FOR ESSEX COUXTY PAEKS 21 



The provisions of this law, providing for a temporary 

 commission, scarcely call for extended reference here. In 

 brief, the presiding justice of the Supreme Court was 

 authorized to appoint a commission of five persons for the 

 term of two years, to "consider the advisability of laying 

 out ample open spaces for the use of the public * * * 

 in such county," with "authority to make maps and plans 

 of such spaces and to collect such other inform^ation in 

 relation thereto as the said board may deem expedient;" 

 and "as soon as conveniently may be," to "make a report 

 in writing of a comprehensive plan for laying out, acquir- 

 ing and maintaining such open spaces." 



The commission was also authorized to employ assistants, 

 and to be reimbursed for actual traveling expenses incurred 

 "in the discharge of their duties." The total expenditures 

 were limited to $10,000, the payment to be provided for by 

 the Board of Freeholders* in the usual manner. 



The attitude of the public at the time of the approval of 

 the bill had continued to grow more and more favorable. 

 The suggestion that those identified with the enterprise had 

 merely adapted the scheme of the metropolitan park system 

 of Massachusetts, entirely overlooked the fact that it was 

 merely the preliminary stages of that undertaking — ^the 

 initial legislation for the first commission — which had been, 

 in a general way, followed. The Orange committee had in 

 the early part of that year, 1894, gone quite fully into the 

 Tarious phases of many of the larger park systems. It was 

 found that the Metropolitan Park plan, embracing, as it at 

 "that time did, thirty-nine separate municipalities, and vari- 

 ous counties about Boston, and having an entirely new and 

 untried system of financing, was wholly unsuited to the 

 needs of Essex County. Indeed, we had all along under- 

 stood that, under the Xew Jersey Constitution, such a dis- 

 trict as had been mapped out and included in the Metropoli- 

 tan Parks area could not be legally laid out or established 

 here; and that this State would not be likely, even if it 



*Board of Ch'€^;n Freeholders is the official title of the county 

 groverain^ hxy^s^ in New Jersey, 



