Letters: Wish-list for town

PHOTO/FILE

Greetings to all readers. As a tourist town could we have a better bus area so people can stand out of the rain as in old days, plenty of parking to let off travellers, a clock that always works and more for people to go and see in the evenings?

CHRISTINE MILLS
Rotorua

The rual community's blood is beginning to boil with all the negative articles on dairy farming recently in the Daily Post. Rotorua was built on dairy and beef farming.

ROCKY FISKE
Rotorua

In his letter of January 10, Reynold MacPherson continues to promote the lie that unelected representatives are making decisions that are binding on our city. This is causing disquiet in our community, as a lie repeated is a lie that may well in time be perceived to be the truth. This lie continues to give oxygen to his much proclaimed negative opinion of the governance of our city, a negativity that in my view is in complete contrast to the positive feelings that are abounding at the moment in Rotorua.

Reynold knows, or should know, that our elected council of 10 plus our elected mayor, are the only ones who can make decisions that bind our city, and that any decisions made by our council's committees can be overturned by our elected council if it so decides. If Reynold does in fact consider that this is not the case, could he please provide the names of his so-called unelected representatives who are capable of, and who are, making decisions that are binding on us all, the people of Rotorua.

If he cannot, then perhaps he could follow the lead of our mayor and put this lie and its negativity to bed so that our city can move on.

JOHN PAKES
Ngongotaha

Thumbs down to the rubbish collectors in the city.

Have to put the bins out at night as we close at 5pm for collection at 5.30am the next morning.

Rubbish trucks won't collect if bins ove filled.

We put our bins out with lids level but cannot stop other people putting their rubbish in them.

They should just take the rubbish so our city keeps tidy and clean. How can companies in town stop people adding their rubbish, impossible! So to the rubbish company, just take the rubbish away.

TRACY PRYOR
Rotorua

Despite known risks, including drought, another global crash, the housing bubble, homelessness and earthquakes, the Economist (pp. 51-52, 10 Dec 2016) used a range of independent ratings to show that New Zealand's economic development since 2008 has been second only to Australia.

It recalled Lange's government ending subsidies and tariffs and encouraging investment. Income tax lowered to a maximum of 33 per cent, national debt reduced to 25 per cent of GDP, and GST raised to 15 per cent to lower health care costs and increase benefits.

New Zealand's GDP is growing today at about 3.6 per cent pa with unemployment under 5 per cent and very high workforce participation rates. Wages are up by 8 per cent in real terms since 2008. Exports have boomed 18 per cent in the last year, especially in tourism due to cheap air fares. Record numbers of economic immigrants are helping offset demographic changes.

The Economist concluded that New Zealand is the easiest place on earth to do business and become prosperous, significantly because life here exhibits the interdependent factors of honesty, happiness, health, democracy and freedom.

It was therefore smart 'positivity' for Rotorua to copy such 'rules for success' and dumb 'positivity' where it did not. Rotorua should end subsidies because they distort investment, hold rates rises to the cost of living and retard inflation, reduce council debt (at $174m, over 6000 per cent of our $2.803m GDP) before interest charges rise again, invest only in core service infrastructure, restore democratic, open and honest local government, and reinstate political neutrality in the bureaucracy.

REYNOLD MACPHERSON
Rotorua