Letters to the Editor
Fix it, please
Graffiti on Town Hall
It is to be hoped the vandals who took it upon themselves to paint the pillars of our Town Hall recently have sufficient knowledge to put the damage right.
What an opportunity for them to showcase their artistic abilities by righting the wrong and restoring the pillars to original condition. Who knows there maybe a career opportunity in the making?
David Johnston
Cambridge
Counting it up
Susan O’Regan
The interview with the Waipa Mayor (Susan O’Regan – The News, June 19) highlights based on the figures provided a rate increase of 47.9 over a four year period from 2024.
This is unsustainable for the ratepayers with no specific detail as to how these figures are arrived at. A great PR exercise by the mayor and her council – we are ‘unanimously supportive of the council’s direction’ – does not explain with proper data as to why. No details of which areas the rates are being invested in, no explanation of why this increase is well above inflation and bank interest rates.
Why doesn’t the council operate within the same figures? The examples of the ‘mess’ certain streets in Cambridge are following their reconstruction are examples of nice to have expenditure, not necessary expenditure. The proliferation of orange cones is another. I recently counted 24 white cars with Waipa Council signage in the Wilson St carpark all with newish number plates. Why so many? How many others are there?
The growth in Cambridge is visible. My understanding is the developers pay a levy for infrastructure costs in these areas and there is an ongoing income to the council in the form of rates from these houses. The ratepayers have to live within their income – it’s time the council did.
W.Schoonderwoerd
Cambridge
More arbitrage
The Waipa District Council reply to my letter regarding water charges has confirmed their statement in their brochure of “…. increases of four per cent per year for the eight years from July 2026 to the end of June 2034 being indicated”. I had inadvertently left out “per year” and it is very important. Have they not bothered to check and discover the 2034 figure in their chart would be $2568, not the $2260 they show? Have they realised the last four years shows a total of only $26 increase?
The second part of their reply does not address the points I made based on their chart figures. I have read that the mayor now believes they should not have paused the Long Term Plan – replaced with a 12 month plan. She regrets Waipā doing this and has made a point of stating it was a unanimous decision of councillors. My observations when I attended the occasional Whanganui District Council and committee meetings were that decisions were made on information provided in reports from staff to the various committees, which then made recommendations to the full council. Are Waipa councillors getting incorrect information in other reports? I realise the Three Waters cancellation had a big effect – but was that because they had not dealt with the problem in past years?
That 9.5 FTE communication people seems ridiculously high Peter Nicholl’s past article re competition often comes to mind. Unfortunately, Waipā District Council has none, and inefficiencies are inevitable.
Peter Clapham
Whitehall
A matter of trust
I read with great sadness (The News June 12) that the Chief Executive of Waipā District Council thinks that an “overall trust rating” of 21 per cent is a good result. I cannot think of any job where my employers gave me a trust rating of 21 per cent and kept employing me. The council now has “an integrated approach to help ensure people get the right information in the right way at the right time.” Where is this information? I think that most ratepayers would like some sort of summarised publication in a newspaper like Cambridge News which informed us of where the council was planning to spend our money. A lot of older people are not computer savvy and would appreciate information in that format.
We would all like to be informed in advance that the council plans on spending our hard earned money on road cones, speed bumps, cycle lanes, and the like, which only seem to aggravate car and emergency vehicle drivers alike, and to be given an opportunity to have our opinions heard. What about a public meeting in the Town Hall which would align with the council’s desire to “welcome public scrutiny and transparency especially when it came to how it spends ratepayers money”?
Katherine Block
Cambridge
Editor’s note: Steph O’Sullivan actually said overall trust in the council grew from 19 percent to 21 per cent from 2023 to 2024, which indicated the council was making progress, “but there is a long way to go and trust and confidence are only rebuilt with deliberate intention and action”.
