Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1904 [PAGE 265]

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1903.]

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OP TRUSTEES.

241

7. That purchases of apparatus for each department be made under the usual forms by the professor in charge with the approval of the Dean of the College and the President of the University as to the advisability thereof and upon the responsibility of the professor and the Business Manager as to the terms thereof, and that purchases shall have reference to the policies determined upon by the Board of Directors.

EELATIONS TO STREET EAILWAY COMPANY.

At the September meeting of the Board, it was resolved that the Board would consent to the granting of a franchise to the Street Eailway Company for running cars through Springfield Avenue upon agreement by the Eailway Company to convey to the University any rights it had to the old right of way through the University grounds and that thereupon the litigation between the University and the Eailway Comptny should be settled. The consent was given, not only by the University b u t by other owners of adjoining property, but it soon developed t h a t the city government of Urbana would not grant the franchise except in conjunction with franchises upon several other streets in the city and upon the agreement of the Eailway Company to accept such franchises and build at least two additional long lines of road running from the center of the city through or past the University grounds, and otherwise enlarge its service. The company has steadily asserted that it could not, on sound business principles, comply with these demands, but has, as steadily, expressed a willingness to respond to a very considerable p a r t of them. Becausej)f this disagreement no settlement between the University and the company has been effected. With the question of street railway service in Urbana, the University can have little to do beyond protecting its own grounds from encroachment. We, of course, desire that our neighbors shall have such railway service as the business which they would be likely to give to the road would entitle them to have, but we are not to be involved in differences as to what that amount is. B u t if so much seems clear, it also seems quite as clear to me that the city government will have difficulty in finding good ground to justify it in refusing permission to the road to occupy the street for a very short distance, half of which is bordered on both sides by the University grounds, when the adjacent owners do not object, when no other interest of the city is claimed to be injured, and when the grant will settle an annoying and expensive litigation and give the University a strip of land running through its Campus and which it needs for the extension of its buildings and the improvement of its grounds. We will not believe that this course will be long persisted in when the matter comes to be understood by the people of the city. I am personally willing to leave this phase of the question to discussion and to the sense of justice of a people whose relations with the University have been agreeable and whose interest in the devlopment of the University is paramount. I therefore recommend the adoption of the following: Resolved, That upon the conveyance by the Street Eailway Company to the University of the strip of land commonly known as the " o l d right of w a y " from Wright street to Mathews avenue, the University will grant permission to the Eailway Company to lay a track and operate its cars over such strips of land until such time as the City of Urbana shall grant a franchise to the Interurban Eailway Company for the term of thirty years, from the present line on Mathews avenue north to Springfield avenue and thence west on Springfield avenue to its present line on Wright street. But if the University should need the old right of way at any time in the future for the erection of additional buildings or otherwise ,the University shall have the right to require the road to change its course and run north immediately after entering the University grounds from the east and then run west on land provided by the University on the south side of Springfield avenue in a way which will assure to the road the right to

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