Letters to the editor: Student loans, museum referendum, traffic problems

Letters to the Editor, February 23, 2018.

Student loans
Among us are many who are burdened with student loans, some with interest and others with interest free.

But then along comes the next generation who are once again rewarded with instant gratification of free tertiary.

While the working men and women struggle to make ends meet, and pay their bills and student loans week-after-week, there is no relief from taxes or student loan cancellation.

The Government keeps talking about growing equality and pay gap but it will never happen if it can not close the debt of generational gap.

Some of us will be paying student loans for the rest of our life and will never own a home because student loan works against borrowing from the bank.

If the Government wants to create better equality and put more money in hard-working Kiwis' pockets then they should look at cancelling student loans debts of the past generation just as they are prepared to spare debt to today's generation.

R Kumar
Tauranga

Museum referendum
Our elected representatives are elected to represent us, not to back off the hard decisions and come back to the electors to make a decision for them.

What is the point of a referendum (Bay of Plenty Times, February 22, 2018)?

If the majority say, vote yes to the museum, the councillors will have some thinking to do, whether to take it as a binding decision, but have the choice if the vote is no, to take the easy way out, and say the people do not want it.

The councillors should act and make the decision themselves.

Shirley Arabin
Papamoa

Waste of money
I am glad that my rates (I live in the Western Bay of Plenty District Council area) will not be spent on a non-binding referendum for the museum (Bay of Plenty Times, February 22, 2018).

What a waste of TCC ratepayers money of $45,000, when the council can decide they want a museum and the majority of ratepayers, if they decide to vote at all, do not want the museum, they can still get the museum.

Wendy Galloway
Omokoroa

Traffic problems over museum
On Tuesday I left 20 minutes early for work hoping to miss some of the early traffic.

To my dismay the traffic on Welcome Bay Rd was backed up well beyond the shops.

The queue was really twice that length as every car, as it passed James Cook Drive, let one or two cars in.

We crawled up to the lights and I could see the queue had doubled again as two lanes of cars were backed up to the lights from Hairini bridge.

This was 7.20am, and the traffic is like this until 9am - every week day!

Surely solving this problem should be a priority for our city council.

The thought of ratepayers' money being wasted on a museum makes me sick. Think of this when you fill in the referendum Tauranga.

Dan Russell
Welcome Bay