Letter to the Editor - Thursday August 23, 2012

Smoke screen

The Northland Age, July 10 - 'Affordability and fairness the key'. The communications manager FNDC, Richard Edmondson, goes on to say, because of an average 4-8 per cent rise in rates, residential rates would rise $108, business would rise to $188, and dairy farmers would rise $220.

I have just paid my new season rates, which have gone up $1286.70, making a total for the year of $22,727.29. On a modest-sized dairy farm this equates to $143.85 per hectare.

Mayor Wayne Brown goes on to say residential ratepayers would continue to subsidise the cost of repairing roads damaged by logging trucks and milk tankers because of councillors' lack of "political will." The truth is the councillors who voted to defer this important decision need to be congratulated on having some "political will."

I would like to ask Mayor Wayne Brown, if the residential ratepayers are paying for the damage that the one milk tanker coming to my farm each day for ten months of the year does, what is he doing with the $22,729 I pay in rates?

I would also point out, on the last council road count on the road past my farm there were something like 2000 vehicle movements per day. The one milk tanker, and general farm traffic per day to my property, is not very significant.

The Mayor's programme in the guise of fair rating, whether it was the capital rating or target road rating to the rural ratepayers, is just a smoke screen. All it does is move the burden of rating from one sector to another. With only about half of the FNDC's land area paying rates it does not solve anything.

Yes, roading in the FNDC is the big problem. The real answer in my opinion is to make the vehicles that do the damage pay. Heavy vehicles do damage roads, whether they be log trucks, milk tankers, metal trucks, service vehicles, tour buses or a host of other heavy transport. How this heavy transport would recover the cost would be up to them.

Mayor Wayne Brown is reported as having said he hates paying rates. Unlike Wayne I do not mind paying rates, as the council has to have money, if the rates are fair, but to be asked to pay about ten times the average general rate for less services than many get, I don't think it is fair.

The councils in the North and the government have got to face the fact that with tourism being promoted, and possible mining, the cost of roading has got to be put on to the users of the roads.

OWEN BAXTER

Kerikeri