Letters: No one getting a free ride in Rotorua

Every building and dwelling in Rotorua is charged rates. Photo/File

Tracey McLeod (Letters, January 4) insinuates that only 26 per cent of the population of Rotorua are paying rates. Does she believe that 74 per cent of our people are living rate free? Surely she understands things better than that.

Every building and dwelling in Rotorua is charged rates. The rate demand is either paid directly to the council by the property owner, or indirectly by the tenant/renter via the rental demand of the property owner. In short, everybody who is the registered occupier of a building in Rotorua is a ratepayer. No one is having a free ride.

JOHN PAKES
Ngongotaha

Nation of misers
My wife bought a Hello Dolly DVD for $5 yesterday and we enjoyed watching it. Especially Ephraim Levi's philosophy that "money should travel around fertilising small businesses, providing opportunities for young things to grow, helping a small milliner's here, a start-up bakery there, flowing in and out".

Our problem is that Kiwis have speculated all their money into used housing, which neither fertilises anything nor helps anything to grow.

We have become a nation of misers, like Mr Vandergelder, spending our last days living on cold beans, watching at keyholes to see if anyone is stealing our small change. We need to get out of our extreme selfishness and realise that our lives do not consist of goods and chattels.

G J PHILIP
Rotorua

On the Church
Jim Adams (Letters, January 1) attacks the Church as an institution, but he would know little about Jesus if the Church had not kept his story alive for 2000 years.

MARK COLLET
Rotorua