The Bay of Plenty Times welcomes letters and comments from readers. Below you can read the letters we have published in your newspaper today.
TODAY'S LETTERS:
No faith in TCAL after hot pool performance
Regarding the Tauranga City Aquatics' (TCAL) ongoing discredited claptrap in the PR-paid advertisement (Bay of Plenty Times Weekend, July 30) - the truth is no, Mount Hot Pools Wellness Centre Redevelopment doesn't need to go ahead.
TCAL clearly has no comprehension of environmental considerations and most certainly no financial nous.
This is the same Tauranga City Aquatics outfit that signed a wellness centre redevelopment building construction contract for $7.5 million before bothering to obtain an RMA consent, apparently without the knowledge of most councillors.
There was no tender process so the TCC Council's own procurement policy wasn't heeded, then when it all turned pear-shaped TCAL did the same no-tendering trick with the current hot pools repair costs estimated at $1.5million.
Still no one has a clue if the leakage problems are solved or not. Transparency, common sense and accountability are missing.
How could anyone have any faith in Tauranga City Aquatics directors or Tauranga City Council, based on these performances?
R Paterson, Matapihi
Overdue: 1c
I realise that retailers are having a tough time. I have just received an overdue account from a local business asking me to immediately pay the outstanding amount of one cent.
As I always hope to pay my bills on time I checked it out and found that they had made a mistake and the reality was that they owed me one cent. How am I going to get the money back?
Readers' suggestions are welcome.
Maurice McKeown, Welcome Bay
Replace cash
Re: Bank fraud (News, August 5)
My question is, will Westpac Bank refund their client's $41,000?
If not, the client will never get the money back because $25 per week would not even cover lost interest.
Surely the bank lost the client's investment and should replace it?
JW van den Hoven, Brookfield
Elitist gallery
Gallery a gift? I disagree.
While I enjoy art, it is not the heart or soul of a city.
I personally find our gallery elitist and, on occasions, pretentious - who can forget the open space exhibition - that vision is still with me. People staring at blank walls pretending it was art. Mind you it made it easy to make a pretend gold coin donation.
I acknowledge that an art gallery is an important part of any city, but let's not build it up to be something it's not.
Pat Stuart, Welcome Bay
Close to homes
In the article on cellphone towers (Inside Story, August 6), Michael Bouliane, communications manager for 2degrees Mobile, says the company "tries to choose and design sites that have the least possible impact on the community". 2degrees have erected towers in Otumoetai, Cambridge, Ngatai and Grange Rds that could not be closer to homes.
If you think 2degrees has stepped over the line with its placement of its towers in residential areas you should ignore Rhys Darby's puerile blandishments and not sign up with 2degrees and if you have signed up, change to a mobile provider that builds its towers further from people's homes.
Peter Trass, Tauranga
Register guns
Many years ago, when there was some form of sanity within New Zealand regarding registrations of firearms, all firearms had to be registered gun by gun to a registered owner.
Now, all you need is a personal gun licence and you can literally go out and buy as many firearms as you like and never even have to register each firearm to your name.
Firearms have been stolen to order for many years (since New Zealand ceased to require firearm registrations), and a BRNO 30-06 which I had owned for 50 years was stolen from an Avenues property a few years ago ... never to be found. An effective solution: Utilise the huge numbers of unemployed to sit at computers (that they all are very familiar with), and begin the task of re-loading firearms registrations to specific owners ... with an amnesty to support the effort?
Hey, I may even get my beloved hunting rifle back as a result.
Michael Donovan, Tauranga
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