Praise for DCC staff doing more than a job

NOW that we are confined to our lockdown environment, it is time to acknowledge the diligent and caring work done around the Opoho area by the Dunedin City Council grounds staff.

I speak for several Opoho residents who also appreciate their labours and would like them to know they are not taken for granted.

We have such beautiful amenities at our doorstep: Opoho Park, the Upper Gardens, the Arboretum, Lovelock Bush, Bracken’s View and all the associated green spaces. And of course the Northern Cemetery (thanks also to the Heritage Rose Society and the Southern Heritage Trust).

All these sites are kept mowed, rubbish is removed, gardens and plots are weeded, trees and shrubs trimmed — all to a standard that is more than ‘‘just doing our job’’.

It makes me happy to pay my rates. Islay Little

Opoho

Coastal solution?

ONCE again I read of comments in the Otago Daily Times regarding the issue of retaining proposals of the encroaching sea at St Clair beach etc.

As a past resident of farming deer and cattle on Saddle Hill, I still marvel at the view of the Pacific, and the ever impending assault on our coastline.

My suggestion to the Dunedin City Council engineers — hire a helicopter and look down from above at the issue. The millions you must spend on dredging the harbour, sand sausages, etc are to no avail.

Why not open up a canal, not too dissimilar to a mini Suez Canal, from the existing estuary through Musselburgh and out to sea at St Kilda? The incoming and outgoing tides would flush out the harbour, removing silt.

After 10 or so years we may regain tourist boats back into Dunedin port.

Yes, it would be a cost paying out property and for excavation, but in the long term a winner for generations to come.

One thing the DCC has forgotten — ‘‘Time and tide wait for no man’’. R. J. Wilson

Cromwell

Tagging issues

It may be that I have been walking more often since lockdown (for which my dog will be eternally grateful I am sure), but there seems to be an increasing number of properties being tagged.

To the general public they are a meaningless eyesore but also a costly one for owners to remove and with the cleaning merely providing a clean space on which taggers can retag.

I have no suggestions as to how to solve this, as a camera outside every potential target is obviously impractical. It appears the Dunedin City Council is not interested as the tagging appears in the main on private properties.

Maybe there is an opportunity for some bright up and coming entrepreneur? Humphrey Catchpole

Dunedin Central

Playgrounds

AMUSING to read a letter to the editor (30.8.21) lambasting one of the Dunedin City councillors about his comments on children’s playgrounds.

The writer of the letter seems to focus on people’s reproductive outcomes to make a case for a wellcontrolled playground for our children.

But the councillor has, as he should, expressed his immense fecundity of imagination and intellect to warn us about the possibility of our children turning into a group of overprotected and timid citizens, instead of the past and present adult generations of New Zealand, bold and willing to have a go at almost anything! Mathew Zacharias

Mosgiel