Obviously, the main question is length of tenancy.
Another issue is the rent payable and the basis on which such rental is established. Probably the most important consideration is: do the pensioners feel safe in this new environment that has been thrust upon them?
I am concerned that the current situation makes no provision for future pensioner requirements, as it is unlikely that now these units have been "leased", they will be voluntarily vacated.
I am sure that Winz will not ensconce pensioners in $1000-per-week motels, so where are they to go? I wonder if this is another example of council short-sightedness.
Perhaps some current pensioner residents may care to offer their thoughts.
D PARTNER
Eastown
Rates reshuffle
There are two ways in which ratepayers assess their rates bill each year.
One is the amount of the demand -- increases above the rate of inflation or increases due to reducing the bill of one suburb to the detriment of another are not appreciated.
The second is value for money. When a council says it is holding rates because it has made efficiencies in its business model, that is great, but when it says "the lower rise had been achieved by reducing services and deferring maintenance" ratepayers need to start worrying.
The above statement was made by the council manager of finance in trying to explain the rates for 2017-18.
I wonder what the manager of finance's view would be if he took his car to be serviced only to be told: "We will only charge you 2 per cent more this time but we will service it to a lesser standard than last time and defer the oil change."
The 2 per cent figure bandied about needs to be taken with a grain of salt. They qualify it by saying, "Any rate increase could vary significantly from the averages once other factors, such as the 2016 district-wide revaluation, is taken into account."
This is rubbish. The district-wide revaluation increases the size of the cake that council has to draw on for its rates, but in itself does not cause rate increases. Yes, if one property (or suburb) increases in value more than another, that might cause anomalies, but the manager has told us these have been negated by lowering the general rate and increasing the uniform annual general charge (UAGC). You can't have your cake and eat it too. Deferring maintenance is just that -- it has to be done sooner or later, usually at greater cost to future rating years.
It will be interesting to see if council breaks down the percentage increase by suburb, and also the effect the approximately $450,000-plus shift from the general rate to the UAGC has had per suburb.
It is only fair they explain to ratepayers the true effect of their -- to quote councillor Taylor -- spreading "the load across those carrying the greatest portion of the rates burden".
It does not take long after an election for councillors to forget they have been appointed and start thinking they've been anointed.
JAMES R WHITE
Whanganui
Air pollution
I would go further, Annette Main, in your challenge to "confidently frown or raise an eyebrow at people who spoil the enjoyment of their favourite places" when telling us about your aversion to air pollution via second-hand smoke (letters, May 5).
I would include people with resource consents to emit gases like hydrogen sulphide who do not monitor and disclose to the public what gases and levels are being emitted -- in fact, air polluters in general.
As a mayor you declared "not our jurisdiction" when asked to advocate for air that does not make us sick and to advocate for transparency around those gases which can make you sick, which council creates with its resource consent to create and emit sewer gases but not to a level that affects health.
As mayor you ignored pleas to advocate for monitoring when you were publicly told these gases caused asthma, hay fever, coughs, watery eyes, memory issues, heart issues. You ignored public notices asking if air pollution from gases like hydrogen sulphide contributed to our high sudden infant death rate.
How people were treated for "frowning" or speaking up about this very dangerous unmonitored air pollution was to be ignored, treated as a serial complainer, and told "not my jurisdiction".
As a mayor, citizens thought, you might advocate for air that does not make you sick. Now I see you only care about second-hand smoke air pollution. We can get away from that but we cannot get away from the unmonitored industrial gases.
A great big frown and eyebrow lift from me.
ROBYN O'DONNELL
Castlecliff
War crimes
On May 22, a Middle Eastern man exploded a small bomb in Manchester, England, killing 22 people, including 12 children.
This received full-page coverage in the Chron, and terrorist bomb attacks were condemned, although there was no mention that the British government had carried out RAF terror bombing attacks on Middle Eastern women and children all through the 1920s in order to seize control of Iraqi oilfields, murdering thousands, with delayed action bombs being especially effective at killing children.
And that bombing is continuing today. During his election campaign, Donald Trump told his anti-Muslim supporters that his way to defeat Isis fighters would be to "take out" their families and, in November, when he became commander in chief of the US Air Force, he gave it new bombing guidelines.
Consequently the numbers of women and children being killed in Syria and Iraq this year has risen markedly to about 250 every month.
On May 26, four days after the Manchester attack, USAF and supporting RAF pilots exploded bombs on a building sheltering Isis family members in al-Mayadin, Syria, and killed 106 of them, including 42 children. The Manchester bombing was carried out by a small minority of fanatics revenging English terror attacks 90 years ago, but the al-Mayadin bombing appears to be the work of redneck pilots obeying the orders of a racist commander fulfilling a campaign promise to his anti-Muslim voters, while also revenging the Manchester deaths. If so, then this is a major war crime of far more significance than the Manchester event, but I have seen no mention of it in the Wanganui Chronicle.
The freedom of the press is one of our key democratic safeguards and, in return, even though your world coverage must be compressed, we trust that it will still express the truth: repressing tyranny, oppressing nobody and never suppressing inconvenient facts. Hopefully, the Chron will have a more balanced news coverage in future.
JOHN ARCHER
Ohakune
