by Roger Handford
A huge rates increase? On top of the toughest times for many people? Mayor Stoltz — your council is robbing the poor to pay for rich dreams. I don’t know why the district’s residents put up with it.
And thanks for the message just before Christmas.
The repeated weather hammer blows since the 1985 Ngatapa storm, the Beehive’s callous disregard for regions such as ours, the creation of a council structure which does not answer to residents’ wishes — these are some of many matters which require a completely new look.
You cannot expect the district’s farmers and workers to shoulder paying for the future — they are already struggling with past and present costs.
People need to be left with enough to pay for the essentials, without council stealing more from the table.
Council’s budgeting is expansionary and inflationary — it always increases, never reduces. This is the worst aspect of a consumer society — never satisfied with what it’s got, while more and more people cannot keep up.
Where does Mayor Stoltz think money comes from? She must believe we all have a secret money tree hidden somewhere.
She needs to get back on Earth, and stop using fancy language to disguise highway rates robbery.
“Resilient waters”, “resilient transport” — meaningless verbiage that is out of touch with reality.
“. . . the unavoidable rates rise that will be decided on by councillors next year”; “To maintain the council’s business-as-usual services there needs to be a 7.9 percent increase . . . which does not account for any growth or anything extra”.
So says the Mayor — but a rates rise IS avoidable, so long as councillors haven’t already made a predetermined decision; so long as they are prepared to take a new look and not keep doing “business as usual”.
Our grandparents knew very well what “frugality” meant — it meant going without.
I suggest it is time to take a hard look at the word “growth’ and thinking of “anything extra”.
It is also outrageous that ratepayers should have to pay for wood debris, silt removal and the like — that should be paid entirely by those who caused the mess.
Mayor Stoltz believes not increasing the rates would cause more hardship for the region.
What twisted logic is this? The equivalent of whether you’d prefer to lose an arm or a leg!
Her reasoning : “. . . we need to invest to bring Tairāwhiti back to being a place where people want to come and for our whānau to enjoy”.
I would suggest Tairāwhiti needs to find a new path forward, not to go back; that our first priority is to make life fairer and more achievable by leaving money in people’s pockets for them to decide what’s best for them — never mind those who don’t live here.
It’s not a matter of “being brave” and thinking about the grandkids — it’s a matter of life being affordable, and cutting your coat according to the cloth.
That other local bodies may be facing big increases is neither here nor there — they make decisions for their own reasons — but I repeat, all increases add to the wider inflation problem with more costs downstream.
I do agree with Mayor Stoltz that it’s time to consider the implications for the community, its wellbeing and so on.
But I believe now is the time to stop doing what we have done before — time to map out a new, less costly future — time to get back to real life and meaningful things.
I suggest we need to severely curb unnecessary expenditure, insist on getting a darn sight more basic bang for our rating buck, and NOT meekly accept yet another increase.
