Letters to the Editor: death, taxes and road cones

Otago Daily Times

2 days ago

Today's Letters to the Editor from readers cover topics including outrage at the protest songs about Gaza, a spokesman for the Trumpian world, and the truth about road cones. Responsible residents make a durable system
Although Waitaki Council's preferred option for district water control is a new joint Council Controlled Organisation (CCO company) with Gore, Central Otago and Clutha district councils, a clear majority of Waitaki voted to retain it in-house.
As this result did not align with the advice received from Waitaki's economic consultant, Mayor Kircher considers the community may have been misled by a deliberate misinformation campaign ( ODT , 25.6.25).
While words like sustainability and resilience are sprinkled about in background assessments, the pros and cons of the options are largely based on economic and engineering considerations, including projections well beyond what can be forecast with any confidence. Besides, compared with the horrifying water rates projected to maintain schemes in a decade, cost differences between options are rounding errors.
Such projections are hard for the rural community to swallow when much of their first water schemes there were simply mole-ploughed in by farmers with their tractors.
In increasingly uncertain times, a much more reliable basis for a decision is to consider the value of preserving full agency over local resources and services. There may currently be checks in the legislation to retain some council input to CCOs, but these can be extinguished with a stroke. The most resilient and sustainable community is one where the residents understand their systems, and are responsible for establishing and maintaining them. Separate companies are no match for home-grown goodwill and engagement. Could the main reason for public preference for an in-house model be fear a CCO makes it that much easier for this government to weaken and marginalise local government and that that is the underlying agenda of the legislation? Community support
Predictably, Don Sinclair fudged the facts ( Letters , 28.6.25). Tahakopa School's board of trustees did reach out to community members for assistance in organising the Tahakopa School Farewell in late March, just as we did with the successful 125-year celebrations held a couple of years prior. The Tahakopa Memorial Hall is the logical choice to receive the locally raised funds from our closed school with the long history of supporting the school by the way of free hall usage. It is now the community's main focus, as only it is large enough to accommodate the whole community and able to cater for district events in traditional Tahakopa style. And, yes I am sure that the good people of the district will support the Tahakopa Hall Board as it continues to improve the hall's facilities, just as good Kiwi country folk have always done. And we're off
It has started already. Today's paper ( ODT , 1.7.25) flushed out a splutter of local politicians denying the obvious. Keep pens and paper at hand, folks, for it looks like local body incumbents themselves will make it obvious who to discard come election time. And Yeo, what a classic cartoon. What was that
What has the world come to when protest songs at Glastonbury cause more outrage than the ongoing senseless killing, maiming and starvation of the entire population of Gaza? Traffic, rather than road cones should be focus
Mid-morning, Portsmouth Dr, Dunedin. The grass down the middle of the road is being mowed. The mower can be seen from some distance, its flashing beacons lighting it up like a UFO.
The operator is seated on an elevated platform within the cocoon of a safety canopy.
The job is not impinging on the road. Common-sense reveals no foreseeable safety issues and traffic management is not necessary. Yet a truck has been assigned to shadow the mower by driving slowly in the right-hand lane a few metres behind the mower, acting as a rolling road block.
It is causing chaos as traffic tries to merge from two lanes to one.
Two minutes later, same journey, roundabout at Larnach Rd / Scott St.
A tricky spot at the best of times with poor sightlines and two of the three meeting roads being downhill approaches. Suddenly a head pops up from behind a bush in the middle of the roundabout.
It is a council gardener on hands and knees.
Common sense tells you that they are in a vulnerable position and traffic management is needed. Vehicles crash into roundabouts.
A ute is parked on the footpath to the side but does not have its warning beacons activated.
There is no traffic management, no warning signs and no speed restriction.
We have to stop talking about road cones.
Cones are not the problem, merely a symptom of the real problem.
When we focus on making jocular remarks about cones we risk trivialising the larger and life threatening issue — the poor standard of temporary traffic management across New Zealand. Inevitable debate on taxes
Tony Fitchett ( ODT , 30.6.25) obviously needs some help with comprehension.
If you take a good flat land farm once valued at $400 per hectare in 1970, which now has a median value $20,000 per hectare (extremely conservative) the percentage increase is 4900%.
If you take a house with a median value in 1975 of $24,300 and compare that with a median house price today of $772,000, the percentage increase is 3000%.
Most readers will understand that reality.
It may assist Dr Fitchett to understand that the purchasing power of your dollar has diminished due to government-induced inflation, so they will always want more and more of your money.
Meantime productivity crashes.
Oh, and who ever said that life was meant to be fair, other than the good ole boys of the Left.
Three cheers from me to Tony Fitchett for his rebuttal of Gerard Eckhoff's apologia for privilege ( ODT , 9.6.25), echoed in warnings from IRD about tough decisions ahead.
New Zealand clearly raises too little revenue compared with Australia and similar countries but from where will the political ability to successfully communicate that come?
Tony Fitchett accurately exposes Gerry Eckhoff as a spokesman for the Trumpian dog eat dog world.
The last message from the late Pope Francis was, 'Today's builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers, and that those who fall along the way are losers. Their's is the construction site of hell.'
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