Fragmenting rates

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 11, Issue 525, 1 March 1994, Page 2

Fragmenting rates

• Your front-page item, 22 February, informs ratepayers that councillors, elected to represent said

ratepayers, had ... "accepted a new rating policy ..." this will come as a great surprise to many readers! When the guidelines and

parameters were set down for the transitional committee to bring the Ruapehu District Council into being, a huge amount of effort was put into "proving that soundly based policies and new initiatives, (that would be entirely "open and transparent"), would lead to a critical focus being brought to bear, by committed professional people who would seek election, to handle all segments of the business of local government. We were promised that by rationilisation and centralising information, programming new methods and positive identification of problems would hold the rates and lead to satisfying the particular needs of the unified district. W e trusted our employed and elected members to ? deliver on those promises. If a referendum were to be taken, it may well be that the decision taken, as re- . ported, would be soundly rebuffed. The ratepayers are no different to the holders of shares in a company that has a $20 million annual gross income; Ratepayers, like shareholders, are entitled to proper communication when it is their pockets that are being attacked. Now, it would seem, fragmentation of the deci-

sion-making process is all the rage and we return to'paralysis by anaylsis' . It is also an unfair burden to place on the ward committees. A Pandora' s Box has quietly been opened! What will come next? A local saies tax? A local poll tax? We are entitled to be free of this sort of insidious imposition. The closing line of your article quotes the council' s chief executive as saying that the complete picture

can only be viewed when all the factors, "have been cobbled together." Is the work of staff and councillors to be portrayed as that of a gaggle of cobblers, or is this a Freudian slip that indicates he has "the boot" in mind?

Gordon G.

Mottram