The Boss and the Franklin Street Fix
Olympia’s public-works fight spills into council: a contractor says the job is done, Boss Sickles says otherwise, and the city engineer is caught in the middle.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
SNARLS.
The city work is in another snarl in consequence of the interference of Boss Sickles with the work of the city engineer. One of the contractors claims that he has completed his work on Franklin street according to the directions of the street committee. Of course the Boss denied it and charged that the engineer was making “too many reports about matters that ought to be fixed up on the outside.” The council, however, directed the engineer to see that the contractor completed his work. The Boss ought to know by this time that the people long ago grew tired of the manner in which things were “fixed up on the outside” with the late Tillotson and the ring, and it is to the city engineer’s credit that he exposes more “fixing” whenever opportunity offers. It is well to keep a public record of the acts of interference of the Boss with contractors while engaged in grading and graveling the streets. It will become useful after a while. Sickles is an expert in interference, and Councilman Murphy, who said last evening that his confidence in experts had recently been lessened, should have cast his weather eye on the Boss when he made that statement. Mr. Murphy, by the way, thinks the bond expert muddled the Councilmen a good deal more than they were muddled before he made his report to the council on that question. That is a very serious charge against a clearheaded lawyer, who is said to have forgotten more law than the first ward statesman ever heard tell of.
“The people long ago grew tired of the manner in which things were “fixed up on the outside.””
The fight over Franklin Street is a familiar municipal story: contractors, inspectors and political fixers arguing over whether the public’s work was done right. In Olympia today, as then, the question is less about gravel than accountability—who signs off, who interferes, and whether residents can see the record.
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