Letters to the editor: Other options available for a Tauranga museum

The Historic Village is still an option for a Tauranga museum, a reader says. Photo/file

Concerns correct

Bryan Gould writing in the Bay of Plenty Times (Opinion, December 5) voices a concern that should have been taken into consideration many years ago.
Residential accommodation has attracted investment due to the ease of borrowing from the banks, with the prospect of extorting ever-rising rents from young people in need of a roof over their heads.
Investors also calculated on tax-free capital gains to finance a prosperous lifestyle into early retirement. Investment funds funnelled into property have starved innovative industry of venture capital resulting in a moribund economy. Young people faced with escalating rents, unable to save to get on the house ownership ladder, voted for change in the election.
Measures to adjust this problem such as rent control and a capital gains tax are well within the competence of the present government, who will not forfeit support thereby at the next election.
Robert Shaw Pyes Pa

Historic Village option

I agree with Bill Humphrey re the museum at 16th Ave. A huge amount of people, including myself gave the museum all sorts of things. I gave a cover sheet that my grandmother had apart from a few other things. I remember a real estate man gave his whole collection of precious and semi-precious stones. It was a great museum at the time. Where did all go? Why can we not have that site still?
There is parking there too.
With so many people allowed to build and live here, we should be thinking of road, rail, bus and water before something that may be a white elephant, as I presume the council thought of the last museum. A lot of people avoid Bayfair roundabout, with no one willing to give way it is a no-go area for a lot. Please think of all this first.
Patricia Roper Mount Maunganui

Special relationship

Bruce Moon (Opinion, December 2) denies that the Treaty of Waitangi sets out a special relationship between Maori and the Crown. The Treaty grants the Crown the right to govern and grants Maori tino rangatiratanga over their whenua.
That is a special relationship. It was confirmed by the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, followed by a Court of Appeal decision that the Treaty established a partnership (between the Crown and Maori), and imposes on the partners the duty to act reasonably and in good faith.
People who want to spend $70,000 to stop Western Bay Maori electoral wards, that will take nothing from them personally, are not acting in good faith.
Peter Dey Welcome Bay