Letters to the editor

Selling Napier's family silver
The serious business of selling Council land should be equitable to all ratepayers.
I see where the Napier City Council is about to review the city's commercial, industrial, residential land portfolio.
Nothing new here. Some of the same ones were lobbying for the selling off of that land when I was on council, which prompted myself and other councillors to call for the commissioning of an independent report. That report, received by John Plairet, clearly referred to that land, Ahuriri in particular, as a Blue Chip investment, and recommended it not be sold!
Nobody forced people to build offices, bars and restaurants and plush up-market apartments on commercial waterfront land in the old wool stores, it was purely their choice!
Almost 40 years ago, former NCC Councillor Garry Plowman got through legislation that allowed all NCC residential leaseholders to freehold their land if they wished to. Lots of people scrimped and saved and did just that. The minority instead chose to have more of the other things in life and happily carried on paying their six-monthly ground rent. The price of a home on leasehold land was always reflected by its asking (advertised) price!
Everyone, with eyes wide open knew they were only paying for the buildings not the land!
And what if some (50) residential leaseholders were lucky enough now to get the 87 per cent discount they want off the cost of freeholding their land would the others leaseholders who paid more for the freeholding of their land be "retrospectively" compensated? Can't see it.
From my understandings, the income stream from leasehold ground rent council receives from its leaseholders goes into the general rate fund, which in turn goes some way towards keeping everyone's rates increases down.
Council also has an obligation to inner harbour works, as did the former Hawke's Bay Harbour Board, before they passed over those leases, with its responsibilities to the NCC and HB RCs.
In plain language, all ratepayers reap some form of the benefit from council's leasehold land portfolio.
We know the price of ground rents have increased significantly over the years, but doesn't the same go for land, buildings, cars, food, electricity the whole bang - everything else!
From my observations, all the supporters of wanting the Napier City Council to sell council's land portfolio have come from people - council tenants with a blatant monetary conflict of interest. Their own!
Matter of fact, I believe the the proposer of the motion for NCC to Review Council Leasehold Land, Councillor Herbert, has a members' conflict of interest. And as such, I believe, should have declared his conflict of interest.
If Councillor Pyke still owns leasehold title, she too needs to take a long look in the mirror, for the flogging off of the city's family silver is serious business indeed more especially when it belongs to all Napier ratepayers!
I would also respectfully (I accept I don't need to our Mayor Barbara Arnot) remind all councillors that they have a moral and fiscal obligation to be fair to all Napier ratepayers not just those with a vested interest. (abridged).
David Bosley, Napier
Game or gossip?
Wow! After 11 weeks of netball in Napier finally something about it from your sports editor.
However, can I say how disgusted I was with the subject and the contents of his article and felt I had to write regarding this article.
I spend every Saturday at the Napier netball courts from 7.30am to 3.30pm and am able to observe quite a lot of what is going on.
The executive does a marvellous job making sure the games run smoothly and trying to keep everyone happy.
Many are there voluntarily from 8am until after 4pm.
I understand that the decision was made to change the Premier 1 games from one hour to 40 minutes each for the last round to keep them in line with the rest of the games being played, therefore no special times were being taken and umpires were kept available for other time slots.
I think this format was taken about four years ago, as the results from these games would not affect the teams going up.
According to the Netball Constitution, I believe that all clubs should have a representative on the executive.
If this is the case, why were the Premier 1 representatives not at the executive meetings when this new format was discussed and voted on. Instead they went to the newspaper - which of course, after their printed statements, doesn't seem to be in the best interests of Napier netball.
It seems such a shame that for the sake of a few (maybe about 12 out of about 1200 players) the paper has nothing positive to say but "A Big Story".
Is this a sports editor or a gossip editor?
Sandra Rowe, Hawke's Bay