I read the news today and it was rather sad
I read today (ODT 15.3.24) that the Dunedin City Council is understood to be expecting to sell Aurora Energy for more than $1 billion. This would enable the council to pay down the company’s $570 million forecast debt, and hundreds of millions of dollars would be left over to form the base of an investment fund.
This council seems quite happy to put the city further into debt and then sell off the city's assets to make a surplus which I am worried they will waste on pet "nice to have" council projects and wasteful purchases such as Sammy's and Forbury racecourse.
Surely they could consider other options? For example, instead of selling off Aurora, the council could ask the university to share some of the increase in rates that ordinary homeowners in the city are going to have to pay.
Back in March 2017 the Productivity Commission's report on tertiary education, commissioned by the then government made a series of recommendations. One of them was to make tertiary institutions pay full rates but this was never adopted. Why not?
The university seems quite happy to continue to invest in property development in an attempt to attract more and more students and stretch the small city’s infrastructure and services even further. But who ultimately pays? We the ratepayers.
Dianne Rooney
Opoho
[The university does not pay general rates but does pay targeted rates for specific services. — Ed.]
Set it free
Aurora is best set up as a debt-free community-owned trust. It's a great idea to free it up from the Dunedin City Council.
But the council does not deserve to sell it given DCC's bad behaviour over many years. Not mentioned in the proposal is where the $1 billion benefit to the council derives from? It will come from the wallets of Aurora users in future years as the buyers regain the billion dollars they pay.
They will have an unassailable monopoly. The behaviour of the council over some years has been egregious, ranging from smoke and mirrors to financing the stadium, stripping the council companies of cash. That led to a degraded network and outages..
At one time the DCC appointed existing councillors to Aurora's board. That was not in the interests of the network, its users, or its users’ pockets. The council has done well, at the cost to others. I suggest a new stand-alone trust to own and manage this network. It's big enough with guaranteed income stream to attract good talent and to run it well. It does not have to provide profit to anybody, thus maximising the money in its users’ pockets.
The income stream is predictable enough to finance and upgrade a good quality network. Should this trust pay the DCC for the privilege of owning this network? In a word, no.
If the DCC took responsibility for their behaviours it would come into existence debt free. The idea of a trust owning the network does no favours to the DCC. But the DCC is owed nothing by the network users. I suggest the DCC owes the users. So let Aurora go free at no further cost to users.
Kerry Hand
Bannockburn and Dunedin
It’s worth how much?
Aurora made $11 million last year, has net assets of $197.5m and a stretched balance sheet recording only 24% equity and $494.6m debt.
Add to that little financial cocktail, hundreds of millions of deferred infrastructure expenditure (poles/lines) and DCC will be lucky to get 50% of the mooted $1 billion sale price.
John White
Queenstown
‘Normal’ drug use not the whole story
The ODT article (16.3.24) "MDMA and ketamine: Inside Dunedin's student drugs scene" portrays a very concerning drug culture. These students are supposed to be our best and brightest — our future doctors, lawyers, scientists, and teachers. Yet we see articles like this uncritically presenting drug use as the norm amongst students. This is not OK.
Where are the comments from non-drug using students? "Tom’' claims that at this point "everyone's on weed" — this is untrue, and demoralising for students who are steering clear of drugs to focus on their studies. I did four years of uni in Wellington, completely drug-free. I had plenty of friends, and only a minority of them used drugs to my knowledge. There was a drinking culture among some sets of students, but that was not universal.
Instead of presenting drug use as "normal’' and that the drug users should just get their (illegal) drugs tested, how about realistically presenting the dangers these drugs pose, and interviewing students who are good role models? How about calling on police to do their job? Otherwise our best and brightest are likely to become down and out — and we have more than enough people in that situation already.
Sharon Wilkes
Invercargill
Help at hand
The story about neighbours in disagreement (ODT 14.3.24) is sadly not an isolated one. There is some good news however.
Dunedin is in the fortunate position of having the only free community mediation service in New Zealand. Dunedin Community Mediation’s trained mediators work with neighbours (and others) to help them find mutually acceptable outcomes to difficult situations. We are only a phone call away.
Max Reid
Manager, Dunedin Community Mediation
Treat the land with due care and respect
Phil Murray (ODT 14.3.24) is correct in what he says about a region’s correct land use. I have just moved to Oamaru after living in Port Waikato for 22 years. I drove that river road to work and back every day and watched trees being removed so as to crop to the edge of the paddock and give more space for dairying.
I watched cows standing in creeks and waterways urinating and defecating into those waterways less than 1km from the Waikato River . Then once home I could paddle out for a surf in the Tasman with all of that swilling around me. Fantastic use of land.
J. McCormick
Oamaru
Not welcome
If there is an issue about performing a haka, it is not that it is an expressive art which embodies a vigorous challenge, nor that it dares express a political opinion. The weakness of haka is the violence inherent in the way it is expressed with yelling and spitting at a perceived adversary while breast-beating, poking out tongues, rolling eyes, and stamping angrily at them with weapons at the ready.
Even if its obvious violence may at a stretch be considered symbolic or merely historic, when haka becomes a cover for expressing abuse or hate, and generates divisiveness, it is not welcome in a society, home, or sport that I want to be part of.
Ron Adams
Wakari
Wags
I thought that a dog with two tails was just the name of a local cafe but it appears also to apply to this coalition government which can be described as a dog, with its policies that are the antithesis of a fair and equitable society and being wagged by its two tails.
Brian Ellis
Pine Hill
