Editorial: Pride in city may halt vandals

Tauranga City Council's biggest vandalism repair bills were to bus shelters. Photo / File

Vandalism is entirely selfish and serves absolutely no purpose.

Very rarely, if ever, does it make a statement.

In the vast majority of cases it is mindless.

As reported on Monday, almost $600,000 of public money is spent fixing damage caused by vandalism throughout Tauranga in an average year.

That's a huge amount of money wasted.

The Ministry of Education has granted Western Bay schools an average of $201,922 a year to repair vandalism at local schools.

Tauranga City Council's biggest vandalism repair bills were for bus shelters, which cost $60,395 in the past financial year,

There was also a one-off cost to pay for the damage to pay and display parking machines on 1st Avenue in April which cost $48,225.

Our councils and the Ministry of Education should not have to fork out hundreds of thousands to fix stuff damaged by mindless vandalism. That money could be better used improving our roads or amenities or investing in improving education rather than fixing things that shouldn't be broken.

Not only does it cost money but damage at schools can disrupt children's learning.

When a person climbed on to the roof at Brookfield School and snapped a pipe to a hot water cylinder pupils from four classrooms had to move to the library for three weeks, principal Robert Hyndman said.

There is no excuse for vandalism. "I was drunk" or "I was bored" are not good enough reasons to damage property that is not your own.

Boredom is no excuse for young people to destroy public property.

There is plenty to do to keep yourself amused if you use your imagination.

Tagging a street sign in the middle of the night is not a challenge or sign of bravery, nor is setting rubbish bins on fire - anyone could do it.

We need to look after our city and the vast majority of us do.

How we encourage the minority to do the same is a tough question.

Maybe we need to work on instilling more of a sense of pride in our city and our country in our kids so they think twice before damaging property.