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Monumental decision

The Around the Mountain Cycle Trail is and will be a great asset and will only get better as the years go by. It’s a great concept. The management and construction decisions on the route taken so far on parts of this bike trail have been more than quite unbelievable and are ongoing.

Fast-forwarding to the upper Oreti. Surely somewhere, on a high vantage point with a good view of the upper Oreti, there should be a substantial monument erected with a plaque on it displaying all of the total wasted dollars paid to the lawyers and the commissioners, as these costs must run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.The price of erecting this monument would obviously want to be met by the lawyers and commissioners themselves as they are the main beneficiaries of the cycle trail so far .Perhaps also it would be wise to have substantial seating around this monument, as one would be better sitting down when learning of these absurd legal costs. Fish & Game partnered by the Southland District Council would most certainly want to be invoiced for the seating, in recognition of their inability to negotiate a route to coexist in the same area. Both sporting codes have a right to be there. Fish & Game is being more than rather selfish for claiming this part of the Oreti exclusively for its wealthy high-end overseas anglers.

Surely the reason we have so much conflict in the world today is traceable back to people who are not willing to share the good things of this world, and greed cleverly disguised as ‘‘it’s our right’’ or ‘‘not on my patch you won’t’’. Matt Menlove Garston

Spending rates money

Our councillors whom are elected on local Government are expected to be guardians of the ratepayers’ funds, the ratepayers are entitled to expect their councillors to spend their funds prudently and responsibly. In past three years we have witnessed some of our city councillors with a grossly irresponsible attitude to the expenditure of our funds. I refer to the announcement just before Christmas of council using ratepayers’ endowment funds for the speculative building of a business house and thus putting ratepayers’ funds at serious risk.

Speculative business development is rightly seen as something only private enterprise should indulge in within our com- munity. This is because success of a private enterprise expenditure depends strongly on the fickleness of the health of our economy.

I realise ratepayers’ endowment funds must be spent on capital expenditure, but surely the building of more pensioner flats or providing an available fund for earthquake strengthening of our heritage buildings is a far better use of this money than this business house Boniface wants built.

The counclilors who approved of the expenditure for the business house have not been named. I therefore take the presumption that approval of the irresponsible development of this business house was by Shadbolt, Boniface, Ludlow, Sycamore, Kett, Esler and possibly Lewis. Pauline McIntosh Invercargill

Flim-flam

So, Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt wants a report on the Christmas light fiasco, less than 12 months after he vigorously defended the trip to China.

Chief executive Richard King says he’s to blame, yet on September 15 last year, it was Cr Neil Boniface who was willingly claiming the credit for the trip. He told councillors he was the person pushing for staff to source products in China where all the lights were manufactured and where our sister city Suqian had factories already in place.

Suqian was also the main reason provided five days earlier by Mayor Shadbolt. In a 9-minute interview with Sean Plunkett on Radio Live, during which the mayor was accused of flimflamming, Shadbolt stated the real reason for the trip to China was to build a trade relationship with Suqian.

And the mayor was more than happy with the process staff had followed. The minutes of September 15, 2015, attribute the following comments to Shadbolt: ‘‘He wanted staff to do their job and sort issues out and now when staff did their jobs, council attacked them for not going through some sort of process that council believed was the proper form of governance. He said staff should be congratulated for what they had done. They had served the city well and lighting was an exciting aspect of the future and he did not think that council should allow hysteria to take hold.’’

So whose version do we believe? Flim-flam indeed. Karen Arnold Invercargill City councillor and mayoral candidate