Council's Discussion Document pushing their Spatial Plan for Rotorua out to 2050 takes a city-centric approach to "planning by command".
The Rotorua District Residents and Ratepayers has long urged council to develop a much more subtle appreciation of how residents and ratepayers want to develop their various villages. And to encourage and support many village development plans with customised core services that are proportionate to population.
We need a strategic programme of recycling or selling assets to promote residential, commercial and industrial development, and to significantly lower debt.
In my view spatial planning should not be based on political clairvoyance and ideological visions like Vision 2030. It should be based on a pragmatic appreciation of community long-term needs, not wants. Strategic options should be gathered by inclusive, interactive and local consultations of all stakeholders, plus practices proven elsewhere.
In my opinion the current planning mess shows that Rotorua will need a period of capacity building in local governance and service delivery after regime change.
Instead of council's intention to fund constant "growth and wellbeing" from even higher rates and debt, we need wise trade-offs that balance "people, profit, planet and progress" so we can live within our means.
NEILL KENNEDY
Rotorua
Uniform approach
Re school uniforms.
What a dull, boring PC world we live in now. In the swinging sixties, girls I knew at school in Wellington couldn't get their skirts high enough. We boys didn't think anything of it.
