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The right message

Have our council been asleep?

Has the upcoming elections reminded them they have a job to do?

Sadly, their full page ad is too late.

Submissions on the Better Local Services reform package closed two days before their ad.

The package, released in March, had its first reading in June.

The Bill to amend the Local Government Act 2002 has been open for submissions for weeks.

The Invercargill City Council hasn’t highlighted this until two days after they closed.

What reason could there be for not calling the community to action earlier?

It seems to me that Invercargill City Council want to control the message themselves.

Fortunately, I was aware and submitted, in my own words, to the Select Committee directly.

A review of Class 4 Gambling is open for submissions until 12 August.

The Invercargill Licensing Trust have promoted it and even offered a draft submission for people to use if they choose to.

For once, ILT deserve the bouquet and, as usual, ICC get the brickbat.

In addition to the orchestrated delay tactics, ICC are scaremongering with information that does not seem to be backed up with any substantive facts.

Why the delay? Whose interest does the delay serve? Not ours. Kylie Fowler Bluff

Council campaign

In taking out a full page advertisement that was little short of propaganda against the Better Local Services Bill, Invercargill City councillors and the mayor got some rate-payer funded campaigning in before the election and gave a wonderful show of groupthink.

However, they never once addressed the problem that the bill is trying to address.

The government says that local government reform is needed in order to produce better outcomes for ratepayers, communities and regional growth.

Rates across the country are increasing faster than a range of indices such as inflation.

So, local bodies generally should improve but do Invercargill City Council services need to be more cost-effective? They sure do!

Invercargill City Council rates per capita have increased since 1996 by one and a half times the rate of inflation.

The latest increase (about which Mayor Shadbolt and Cr Boniface were reported as being pleased) is six times the rate of inflation.

These figures are proof that the council is not efficient.

Councillors are trying to fight the inevitable through scaremongering but are ignoring the issue. Instead, they should concentrate on improving core services and driving down costs.

If they do that (a big if judging by the last two decades) ratepayers and businesses will benefit and government will have no reason to step in. Dave Rohan Invercargill

Get it right

Instead of the seemingly never ending euphoria about your new premises how about giving some thoughts to your now long suffering and local news deprived subscribers! We have been suffering from having to put up with typographical errors, spelling mistakes, doubling up of news snippets, so called news items that bear no relevance to Southlanders, obituaries about totally irrelevant to Southland people and an absence of sport draws and local results informing us where and how our grandchildren are partaking, and altogether a diminishing coverage of Southland generally.

This mornings’ virtual nondelivery of my paper has caused this unburdening of my displeasure. Lying in a pool on my rain soaked drive were two rubber band only protected items of totally soaked news print, both which should have been mine and my neighbour’s morning newspapers.

This was followed by a telephone call to your call center to be attended to by an accent that was neither Southland nor Australian but was I think suitably apologetic on your behalf. Probably because she gets lots of calls similar to mine. Could you please get your act together and start publishing and carefully delivering a Southland newspaper so that I am not forced to take out a subscription to the ODT. Michael Fenton Invercargill