If he does not want to, why does he have to?
Hearing all the hoo-ha about Lee Vandervis, I find myself tempted to vote for him next time. I don't often agree with him, but whatever happened to freedom of speech?
Surely he is entitled not to want to attend a meeting if he doesn't want to. Or not to speak Maori, if he doesn't want to?
Ralph-Peter Hendriks
Sawyers Bay
As a ratepayer I am fed up with the bickering of councillors over what I consider petty things dressed up as racism when it’s just a different point of view. A message to these councillors to stop wasting my money, which I can ill afford, and get on with some work for your gold-plated salaries.
Alan Shooter
Waldronville
Chin up Cr Vandervis. Nobody said democracy was easy. Maybe the Dunedin City councillors should have done what the Southland District Council executive did by having the public excluded four times?
Frankly, I might not agree with what the elected councillors say, or do, but I defend their right to say whatever because there is always an election coming.
Cr Carmen Houlahan is correct in observing “a waste of ratepayer money”.
Jim Moffat
Caversham
Thankfully, the council seems to have narrowly avoided surrendering to petulance and personal malice by punishing Cr Vandervis, an act which would likely have been very costly for the DCC, and therefore, the ratepayers. It is probable that any significant censure, for merely stating incontrovertible facts, would result in quite justifiable action from the beleaguered councillor.
Hopefully the threshold for childish complaints by councillors is under review, and that some councillors recognise that their presence on council is due to the fickle nature of local voting rather than any ability on their part.
Ian Pillans
Dunedin
[Abridged - Editor]
To me it looks like Cr Lee Vandervis has apologised for pointing out facts. There's a lot of this going on these days. Well, I'm also sorry, but sometimes the truth hurts.
Dave Crooks
St Clair
Learn from classic film
Everyone concerned about the speed limit at the Waitati and motorway junction should watch Goodbye Pork Pie where the yellow mini navigates the very large grassy roundabout which used to exist at that corner. Of course they removed it so the trucks could go faster around that corner. That roundabout offered safe speeds for motorists and very safe crossings for pedestrians of all ages. Is it too late to revisit that idea?
Susan Easterbrook
Dunedin
Mines and money
Fascinating stories about the potential for mining in the country lately under fast-track legislation. One thing that strikes me about all this though is a slight whiff of propaganda about the employment opportunities presented. One mine quoted as being able to attract fly-in fly-out operators (going to Australia) to stay at home. But when push comes to shove we know these mines will offer ‘‘New Zealand’’ wages and ‘‘New Zealand’’ conditions.
Why do people fly to Australia? Because they don't have local wages. I have zero confidence any mines here will offer the kind of cash fly-in fly-out operators expect.
Matt McDonald
Mosgiel
Just why would a turkey vote for Christmas?
It was not at all a surprise that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon got a cool response from the local government attendees at their annual conference in Wellington.
The Prime Minister put into plain words the frustrations that many ratepayers are feeling.
Councils, along with insurers, are the main drivers for sharp rises in inflation and costs of living according to the Reserve Bank, but almost universally in the South, protestations about rate rises, wasteful spending and ideological stances, fall on deaf ears.
The submission process is a charade barely tolerated by bored councillors and ignored by staff whose main driver is to ensure that the bureaucracy is maintained or increased.
The Prime Minister was absolutely on point to highlight the wasteful spending on frivolous projects, but the reaction he got demonstrates the plain fact that councils - and certainly their collective body, the Local Government Association - are wedded to the ideology promoted and adopted by the Helen Clark Government of General Competence.
Councils have demonstrated that they are incapable of such competence and must concentrate on the basic provision of necessary services without spending millions on spurious extravagant traffic management to fix a pothole, spending millions on legal opinions to oppose progress and processes to limit opinions contrary to their own ideologies.
The reaction to the Prime Minister’s message to the conference tells us that if we want change in the South we need to have some major clean-outs in local government.
Russell Garbutt
Clyde
Incentive for rubbish to be biffed greater
In economics there is the concept of perverse incentives: where actions cause unintended consequences in opposition to the desired result. Often these consequences are foreseeable, with some more thought.
The recent switch to the use of residential rubbish bins is a case in point. Because we pay a flat annual rate for waste collection, the incentive is to fill the waste bins as much as we can to get the best value for money. For someone like me, who it looks like it’s going to take a minimum of six months to fill a red bin once and who will never use their green organic waste bin because I compost, my unavoidable perception is that I’m delivering a very hefty subsidy to the system.
I’d like to ask why the economical RFID tag technology, frequently used in the waste disposal industry to log pickups from specific customers, wasn’t used here to create a fair, pay-as-you-throw system to incentivise conscious consumption for waste minimisation? Furthermore: how much are the volumes of different types of waste expected to change under the new system, and are they being tracked?
David Cohen
Kew
[Chris Henderson, Dunedin City Council waste and environmental solutions group manager, replies: ‘‘We track the volumes of different types of waste going to landfill, and the numbers we’re seeing so far tell us the new kerbside collection service has been an overwhelming success. The new service was introduced on July 1 and in the first month over 665 tonnes of food and green waste was collected in our new green-lidded wheelie bins, representing 45% of the total waste collected in July. This means residents almost halved the amount of waste going to landfill, and the trend is continuing. We do acknowledge the new kerbside service does not suit all properties perfectly, but it is the best and most cost-effective system for the city as a whole. We continue to monitor developments in ‘‘pay as you throw’’ technology, including RFID technology, but we do not believe it is currently a suitable option for Dunedin.’’]
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
