City Council Prepares to Give Away Valuable Tideflat Land

The franchise and vacation of the Great Northern railway will probably be passed tonight and Jim Hill will get what he wants from the city. Councilman Brand says he has instructions from his constituents that in all dealings with Jim Hill lines the city shall get dollar for dollar in property. The Great Northern gets its franchise free and about two acres of land, worth from $50,000 to $75,000, and it gives a little strip to widen Twenty-first street for its own benefit, the whole strip not amounting to a good city lot. Present indications are that the council will just give Hill what he asks with no guaranty as to what he will do with it, and with no provision for a bridge at Twenty-first street to get over to the property. And there is no provision made to compel the Hill lines to give the city a decent rate or equitable switching charges. This is the kind of treatment Jim Hill is handing out to local shippers, and yet he expects the city to throw $75,000 worth of valuable tideflat property into his lap. The council is preparing to do it unless the people take a hand and demand something in the way of concessions before the city gives up its land.