Ever found yourself on a Friday evening, slippers on, relaxed, dunking an Earl Grey tea bag, only to have your serenity smashed by bottles clanging, and a heavy bassline riddim infecting your once peaceful evening. When, had your neighbours given you a heads up, you wouldn't feel so disappointed?
Thismust be similar to how Goldiluck Bakery felt after selling a steak and mushroom pie, looking out their shop door to see the council laying out the green carpet creating a "parklet" trial in Rotorua - removing three car parks from outside its business with zero consultation in the process.
Similar to the CBD cycleway, the parklet is a fantastic idea, but it has been rolled out badly.
Carparks are one of the biggest wastes of public space. Hundreds of 4x5m pieces of public space reserved for nothing but parking a metal box for at the most eight hours over a 24 hour day.
A parklet changes this, taking back public space to be used by people instead of metal boxes.
With that being said, we love our cars, and nothing is changing this, so the council needs to ensure the needs of businesses - to have ease of access for customers arriving by car - is maintained.
Had proper consultation with the neighbours taken place, perhaps a workable solution could have been found. Instead, just like your opinion of your noisy neighbours, public favourability has been lost and a great idea to reclaim public space could be lost due to another bad roll-out of a CBD enhancement.
Jill Nicholas has completely ruined my forthcoming Saturdays. Mandatory/compulsory-for-me anyway first item read in Saturday's paper at the breakfast table of her Our People profiles are to be put on halt with her stating that she is taking a break until September.
A well-earned and deserved break I am sure but I shall miss her interviews with local, interesting characters; all have intriguing tales to tell, that's for sure.
Thank you Jill - come back sooner if you can please. Your way with words is something I aspire to emulate, failing dismally. Meanwhile, enjoy your 'time out'.
Eleanor Ashcroft Sunnybrook
Unfair attacks
As a subscriber to your newspaper I am appalled by what is in my opinion the incessant unfair denigration of our mayor by a seemingly orchestrated coven of letter writers.
The latest puerile expressions by a trio, re the Mayor's emphasis on the dangers of allowing homeless people to sleep in an unlicensed building, illustrates, to me, this paranoia.
I would think that Jim Adams, a self-professed international journalist, would not let his personal feelings override his judgements of local politics.
So come on correspondents, put your personal prejudices aside and let us have a good, clean debate about local affairs. [Abridged]
