Need to see Dunedin grow — and reduce debt — before plan

SANDY Graham, the Dunedin City Council’s new chief executive officer, is to take control and plan for the city’s growth.

Surely, what the city needs is ‘‘growth’’ then a plan.

The council with 1100 employees outstrips every freeenterprise, entrepreneurial business in the town.

Councils don’t generate economic growth; rather, their heavy bureaucrat hand suppresses it — all the fault of central government requirements, of course.

Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman once observed: ‘‘No bureaucrat spends tax (rate) payers’ money as carefully as those taxpayers themselves would have.’’

Need an example? Sammy’s! Why did the city buy that load of asbestos contamination with a poor seismic assessment of only 10%25% of a new building standard?

Estimated spend at about June 2020: purchase price $28,000, plus $60,521 spent on maintenance and associate property costs including rates. A total of $88,521 for what? I’ll warrant the total cost is now more than $100,000.

Come on, Sandy. Sell the council forests to a Chinese investment company and plan to reduce the city debt.

Savvy seniors

Jim Moffat

Caversham

IN answer to Ken Lawson, of Oamaru (Letters, 25.1.21), and numerous other ageists among your correspondents:

Please stop inferring everyone who has reached advanced maturity is an elderly ignoramus!

I am 84, and have used a computer since the early 1980s. I joined the internet in 1994 — probably before many of you were born. And definitely before Spark/Telecom knew it existed.

And there are many ‘‘elderly’’ just like me.

Mayoral title

Joan Mann

Forbury

I WAS quite surprised to hear, at their meeting this week, some Dunedin city councillors address Mayor Aaron Hawkins as ‘‘Your Worship’’.

One definition of worship is ‘‘the reverent love and devotion accorded a deity, an idol or a sacred object’’.

As an ODT journalist reporting Dunedin City Council meetings, not once did I hear a councillor address Mayor Sir Leonard Wright (195059) or Stuart Sidey (195965) as ‘‘Your Worship’’. In fact, councillors merely stood and said their piece with no preliminary introductory word to the mayor.

I suggest that ‘‘Mr Mayor’’ or ‘‘Sir’’ would today be a quite suitable address to Mayor Hawkins for those polite councillors who opt for an introductory greeting.

Clarke Isaacs

Sunshine .....................................

BIBLE READING: Let the children come to me, and do not stop them. — Mark 10.14.