WE SAY, YOU SAY

WE SAY:

Are you happy with your local council? With rising inflation, the pressure is piling on councils this year to tighten their budgets to keep rates payments down for households across the country. Overall, do you feel that your council and community board does a good job for your area?

POLL RESULTS:

Sixty per cent of Neighbourly members from across New Zealand said that they are not happy with their local council and community boards. Some have shared their thoughts about their own local councils.

YOU SAY:

I love all the facilities like libraries, parks, pools, museums etc. Public toilets are usually clean and I see rubbish people picking up/vacuuming up rubbish every day it seems so yeah, I’m happy. I suspect some businesses aren’t happy with the road closures etc and some house owners with blocked leaf-filled drains.

– Sarnia from Auckland Central

No, to be fair we do have a choice and our decision, and it is up to the people to make sure that the councillors we vote for do the job that they presented. I appreciate at times it is very frustrating to get through, depts are so varied, and time is of an essence to everyone! It is up to the people if they’re not happy with their lot, then to endeavour to make your voice heard! Putting the phone down and trying later never gets you anywhere, Busy lives make things twice as difficult and many leave to the few, for once letting councillors know how we feel by everyone!

– Carole from Beach Haven

The roads are neglected and yet you see them resealing roads that have no damage. Our park area is neglected, the playbark needs weeding and the bark replacing. The paths are breaking up and we have elderly people and children that walk and ride around those parks. There is a jetty by the pond which has rotting and loose boards. How long will it be before someone is injured or their child falls through and drowns in the pond. We need the council we voted for to earn their keep before there is a vote of no confidence in their leadership.

– Dave from Shirley

Re Wanganui District Council, we seem to get the same old dead wood every election making a career out of squandering ratepayers’ money on things that only a select few will ever give a darn about while things like recycling collections and infrastructure like bus-stop signage are largely ignored spending $120,000 changing the name of a walkway because the councillor it was already named after had changed her name and the list just keeps getting bigger. No elected official should ever be allowed to serve more than three consecutive terms in office.

– Dane from Gonville

Auckland Council has the slogan ‘‘most livable city’’; this is a gross over statement. They are making this city impossible to drive around. They have removed waste bins from parks so the lazy people just leave their rubbish to blow everywhere. We have the worst amount of pot holes in our roads I can ever remember. They grow trees on our verges and don’t clean the leaves from gutters and drains – no wonder our streets flood.

– Luz from St Heliers

I think the floods in Auckland ought to be a reset for councils in developing their District Plans. Clearly small sections, creating more and more infills with huge areas of concrete is not forward thinking. Maybe time to redesign cities so that the 15-minute ideal walking to all amenities can be achieved. As The Listener says in this week’s edition early last century cities were redesigned for cars and transport, cities of the mid 21st century will need to be designed for excess rain and climate change. For those of us still lucky enough to live on a quarter acre in a little paradise, we only need to maybe increase the number of water tanks, as we have large lawn areas and gravel areas and good water run off.

– Lola from Awapuni

I am happy with our council. Tararua council do a good job and thank you to them.

– Lyn from Tararua District

I am so happy with the way the council has cleaned up Guppy Rd’s ghastly electricity wires and made the way to the river safer for the school. Excellent, tidy, with little impact on traffic.

I only put out my wheelie bin once a week for which you can apply for a reduction I was told. The black bins weekly are great. I put the one for glass over the one for paper so that they do not get wet or blow all over the street. They are still all collected and no mess.

– Deborah from Taradale

Do I trust any city council? Not at all, no to any of them, especially not Porirua City Council.

The basic services that we now have to pay for, that once were covered by our rates – the cost of rubbish bags is a fine example. Water meters have been put in – why would they spend all that money putting them in unless they expected to recoup it by charging us for our water usage. Our water supply has already been handed over to Wellington Water, is this another thing our council is

dropping as a responsibility. Parking meters in place in the centre – I am sure they are anxiously awaiting the time they can restart charging for parking in the city centre.

We pay exorbitant rates for these services and perhaps it is time the council thought about putting a cap on the top salaries and trimming the management teams. It is the bottom-rank people who actually do all the work and need to be kept, not those sitting in the offices pushing paper and computer keys.