Wanganui District Council: If it keeps doing the same things, it will keep getting the same results.
Wanganui District Council: If it keeps doing the same things, it will keep getting the same results.
Asset sales
Steve Baron (Chronicle, June 27) praised the current Whanganui District Council for its budget and low rates increase and called for asset sales to reduce debt.
These are measures that have been tried before without success.
In my submission to the council's annual plan process, based on experience as a member and customer of local authorities, I suggested that, to make sustainable reductions in rates, the council needs to be innovative in all of its activities, rather than just picking around the edges of the budget as they and their predecessors have always done.
I reminded them of a well-known adage: If you keep doing the same things, you will keep getting the same results.
Michael also reduced staff, but without making corresponding cuts in activities. So redundant staff came back as contractors at higher cost. Go figure.
Previous councils experimented with making some staff into contractors. Those small businesses have all disappeared without trace, and their work is now done by a small clique of national companies that can hold us to ransom by dictating prices.
So the current council is going to be facing $10-12 million in loan repayments before it starts thinking about next year's expenditures, which will include unavoidable items such as the increased cost of running our new and improved sewage treatment plant.
I know that it is hard to think long-term when you have an election looming less than three years hence.
But our council should be leading us to think about what we want our district to be like in 20 years' time so their annual plans can be focused towards a coherent vision.
STEPHEN PALMER Bastia Hill
What happened?
The Wanganui section of the shared pathway is an asset to our city, but dear oh dear what has happened to the section from Balgownie Ave to the riverbank?
Last week your paper has shown photos and text about the early completion of the latest upgrade "Balgownie Ave to ... ". This is incorrect, as the upgrade does not include the section Balgownie Ave to the river.
In my opinion, this section of the pathway was drastically in need of an upgrade.
However, this short section is still in a deplorable condition -- the whole section is narrow, rutted and a muddy quagmire in two places.
When can we expect this section to be completed?
KATHLEEN O'SULLIVAN Parkdale
Editor's note: Our story stated Balgownie Ave to Gilberd St, which is correct. The remainder is scheduled for completion late this year or early 2018.
Fantastic story
I've just started my Thursday with a large cuppa and the Chronicle. In The Country rural section I came across Laurel Stowell's fantastic Dalrymple story and savoured it with a slow read while my tea went cold.
It's exactly the kind of readable, informative and topical story I hoped would cross my desk every day in my time as a rural magazine/newspaper editor and council communicator.
It also exemplifies the standard I aspired to whenever I found myself out on a farm, chatting to a farmer and trying to distil into words on the page the essence of why this was an important story.
A key challenge was how I could make it as enjoyable for my readers as the visit and conversation were for me.
Laurel regularly exceeds the highest standards of rural journalism, and I'm sure her Dalrymple feature had many city slickers feeling they were in their gumboots, leaning on the fence and having a chat with the very engaging Roger.
Engaging: Roger Dalrymple and Laurel Stowell's story about him.
And, on Page 9, the same writer's story on the work being done by Horizons Regional Council on potential feedlot regulation was a timely update that brought clarity to a relatively new but complex policy issue that is part of the mix of rural environmental concerns of strong interest to the public, farmers and regulators.
It's good to know families on the land like the Dalrymples share our desire for smart practitioners to farm within sustainable limits and maintain a flexible approach to their guardianship of our precious taonga.
As I write this, I'm listening to the Environment Ministry's admission on RNZ's Checkpoint that, despite a doubtless well-staffed communications team, it was unable to explain the new "swimmable rivers" policy it promulgated and which has exposed its own minister to ridicule while causing widespread criticism and incredulity among both the public and experts.
Keep up the great work, Laurel and the Chron!
CAROL WEBB Whanganui
New tattoo
Well, Gazza has done it.
He has his new tattoo of Peter Burling on his left shoulder, reading "America's Cup Is Now New Zealand's" with "Peter Burling Helmsman 2017" in the middle.
