Rate burden

Is it really surprising that some businesses in Nelson’s CBD are closing shop and moving to where there are cheaper rents? (Nelson Mail, January 22).

For years Nelson council has been warned that escalating costs by way of rate increases were going to impact commercial rents. The chickens have come home to roost even as NCC discusses how far to set rates above the discarded 4 per cent voluntary cap for increases.

One business owner encourages people to buy local. This is getting difficult to do when more and more of Nelsonians’ discretionary income is eaten up by yearly rate increases.

Government is only legitimate when it takes into account the ability of its citizens to afford the taxation it imposes. Many of us voted Rachel Reese for mayor in the hope that she would impose some fiscal discipline that the alternative candidate did not appear to offer. We have been sorely disappointed. from a time when plastic was not invented yet. All goods came in cardboard boxes, big and small. Either you walk home with six cans in your arms or a cloth bag or you find a cardboard box. A box ofen comes in handy and can be compacted too for your big, fat tiger worm farms for the bestlooking vegetable patch. It is a winwin solution: simpy ban all plastic bags from God’s own country. Where there is a will, there is a way. to be tossed out after one term’’. Walter Nash (Labour 57-60) and Norm Kirk/Bill Rowling (Labour 72-75) would disagree – and that was before Labour had the millstone of the Greens around their neck! Finally, I amlooking forward to seeing what the ‘‘something’’ is that can be done to make Rocks Road safer for walkers and cyclists other than relocate SH6.