Dunedin City Council needs common sense

LIKE hundreds of others, I attended one of the Dunedin City Council’s ‘‘dropin sessions’’ to give my feedback on the 10year plan. My concerns are primarily the huge increases in rates and council debt, to fund a large number of ‘‘vanity’’ projects.

I know many others did the same. The councillor I spoke to assured me he shared my views. I know that many others expressed similar views to mine — and received similar assurances from the various councillors they spoke to.

Now all those councillors, with the worthy exception of Cr Lee Vandervis, have voted for the whole shebang and our rates are due to rise more than 50% over the next decade due to their outrageous profligacy.

All those councillors who ‘‘shared our concerns’’ on rates and debt need to front up, explain in detail why they reversed their positions, why they persist in ignoring all public opinion on all occasions and give us a huge apology for their dishonesty. A. Williams

Dunedin

HILARY Calvert is right on the money with her definition of current Dunedin City Council machinations as an ‘‘ambush’’.

Sadly, it seems to be based upon a replay of the last one, when glitzy graphics, a scale model (of a version which was never proceeded with), and an overblown ‘‘presentation’’ to a gullible council and public helped it over the line.

Significantly, we find the same agencies pushing hard for the proposed pipedream using much the same tactics as before. Do we ever learn?

In the unlikely event that anyone would want to spend time exposed to the bitterly cold wind which blows down the harbour at most times, why proceed with a project which is pure, ostentatious vanity and nothing more?

Common sense would indicate the lower Rattray St railway crossing could be reinstated at little cost to city ratepayers now that goods trains are no longer marshalled in the yards just south of the crossing, removing the previous oftstated objection of locomotives blocking the crossing for much of the time.

Foot access to the Chinese Garden would be enhanced without the grandiose and empty gesture which has recently been approved, and I doubt that anyone sampling the climate even at that wellsheltered point would feel any urge to proceed further on foot after 10am on most days of our prevailing northeasterly conditions. Ian Smith

Waverley

Check your facts

WITH the social media revolution online all the rage these days, a lot of ordinary people have become ‘‘home’’ journalists.

If one finds oneself using one’s opinion on current events, then some rules of journalistic practice should be followed.

Try to doublecheck sources, try to keep emotions in check and, above all, do not think all Americans are OK with the way their democracy is functioning.

There are smart people in the United States working on how to restore normality. The situation is complex and the stakes are high, and it takes a whole lot of mental energy to keep up with.

So, instead of venting outrage online, try supporting the people trying to fix the mess. Who knows, we might just get the better world we deserve? Aaron Nicholson

Manapouri

Remember your maths?

THERE is an additional benefit of the Barnes Dance crossings in Dunedin.

They give us a practical use for Pythagoras’ Theorem.

Rochelle Crossman

East Taieri