Stupidity on the pitch
What a disgraceful display of financial stupidity and ignorance our city councillors are exhibiting when they bribe a sporting club (the squash players) to shift out of the jointly used Mitchell Park premises and then spend $6m on new premises two kilometres away, mainly for a bowling club.
The squash and tennis clubs sharing of their premises made sense, as without the squash club, the tennis club will be left on its own to maintain the premises, this being an expense previously shared by both clubs and now unaffordable by one alone.
This is on top of recently spent ratepayers’ money on maintenance of these same premises.
When it became known that the hospital no longer wanted the Mitchell Park land adjacent to it, then the intelligent and sensible option would have been to abandon the expensive $6m change of site for the bowling club.
On top of this saga, comes the Council undermining other businesses (ratepayers all) by installing gym equipment into the Huia Pool redevelopment, thus cutting the ground from under the feet of all those independent gym providers in the Lower Hutt CBD.
The council attitude is what is $7-800,000 in a ‘‘total project spend’’ of $7m upgrading the pool complex.
It would be interesting to know exactly how many swimmers requested the gym?
I say it is money being thrown away, as with the $6m spend on the new unnecessary bowling lawns at Naenae.
With the projected $150m – $200m spend by the Council, these figures are significant to the ratepayers, whose annual charges will rise beyond the ability of some to pay.
The biggest disgrace is undoubtedly the demolition of the Horticultural Hall and interior of the council buildings, where a reasonably economic upgrade would have saved the ratepayers tens of millions of dollars.
I personally cannot see the extravagant conference centre being anything but a great white elephant.
To my mind (and others I know) I think common sense from councillors has gone out the window. It is just a pity those councillors don’t follow.