About 30 people from Wanganui's helping agencies yesterday listened to the aspirations of 17 Wanganui District Council candidates, and their attitude to funding agencies like their own.
The council's youngest candidate, 19-year-old James Penn, said council needed to not only run like a business, it needed to have a strong social conscience and understand what its customers wanted.
Council hopeful Robert Scott said: "I'm for the common good. It's what I believe in and what I've done all my life."
Another candidate, Garth Scown, said it wasn't the council's job to fund helping agencies. That was for central government or volunteers, because raising rates to do so hurt the poor.
Candidate Rory Smith said whatever the council did had to benefit people "on the lowest rung of the ladder". He said he didn't think the new Local Government Act would prevent councils funding helping agencies.
Last night business people also got the chance to hear candidates' attitudes at a meeting held by the Whanganui Employers' Chamber of Commerce.