It is a published fact that the Sarjeant does not make a profit - this financial year it requires some $1.8 million of ratepayer support, and ratepayer funding has always supported it to the best of my knowledge.
The proposed budget for 2017-18 is $1.5 million, rising to $23.7 million in 2018-19 (WDC figures). So if the gallery requires that amount of support, where will the money come from to repay the loan? In other words, like other official suspensory loans, the amount will be written off - a charge on the ratepayer.
I have a challenge for the mayor, who seems to be an avid fan of the redevelopment - publish a full set of financial statements on what money the council has already spent on this project and what its commitment is to future funding.
And don't forget to include all the costs associated with the setting up of Sargeant on the Quay including purchase, refurbishment, removal costs and current operating and maintenance costs.
I could ask for council staff time spent on the project to be included seeing as how ratepayers have to pay charge-out fees for certain services. That may be too much to ask.
G J MOLES
Castlecliff
Enlightening
The rank and file are revolting. I see my flagging notes in your paper on November 26 [flags at half-mast] stirred up something.
I want to thank Messrs Dalton and Lane for their illuminating insights and yourself, sir, for printing the dialogue.
I know from my media training that counterpoint, controversy and conflicting viewpoints are the fodder of the news media.
I also see that investigative journalism is lamentingly on the decline and our media-mediated lives are saturated with information, which tends to lean to opinion rather than fact. So, thank you gentlemen for enlightening my, if not our, ignorance and flagging awareness.
Karl Marx may have claimed that religion is the opiate of the masses. We, the poor and needy, may be the great unwashed rank and vile, but we are no longer ignorant as we bask in the gentle light of education and knowledge. Viva la revolution, viva la vie!
CHIRISTOPHER CAPE
Whanganui
Crocodile tears
I read with great interest in the Chronicle the dealing by the Chinese Goverment with the collapse of a cooling tower under construction in China.
Nine bosses are being held responsible for the death of 74 workers. In another incident where 165 people were killed, a court handed down sentences to 49 people, including a suspended death sentence.
So different to our current Goverment which doesn't seem to give a stuff when these things happen here, except to turn up at a memorial service with crocodile tears.
The Pike River mining disaster would have to be the most disgusting demonstration of lack of any care or responsibility by any goverment, goverment department or corporate this country has witnessed.
From start to finish, it's been cover-up after cover-up, and now there is a rush to seal up the entrance and hide away any embarrising evidence that might put a bad light on politicians in an election year.
A Chinese Goverment would have put half of the 120 polis under arrest, along with the corporate bosses.
We have a similar issue with the CTV building collapse in Christchurch with no consequences after five years. Refer to CTV Building on Wikipedia and you will see what I mean.
A BARRON
Aramoho
Sediment plume
Chronicle columnist Nicola Patrick is worrying about an underwater desert that can be turned into a food bowl once the iron is extracted by Trans Tasman Resources. Waverly ironsands extraction proved that.
We know not much grows on ironsand but just imagine all the plankton that will attract the fish once the iron is out.
She worries about a sediment plume - there is already a sediment plume provided by the rivers that feed this area - that is why the fishing is so good off Patea and Wanganui. The sediment plume from our rivers is going to become huge once all the logging hits its straps.
This sediment can be the lifeblood of our oceans providing the nutrients to feed the food chain - so don't worry.
The last two huge tsunamis created havoc on the ocean floor but it's all good - just like the 250,000 hectares that Mt St Helens destroyed; 25 years later restored, a blink in planet time.
Nicola sneers that the money will just go to the shareholders whose taxes will feed the 250,000 starving children she thinks we have, while some will go to the 250,000 obese children we have.
We cannot have many children without a government-blamed problem - my guess is they are the children of the shareholders.
G R SCOWN
Whanganui
