Jonathan Silby
Welcome Bay
The wrong solution
Two petitions were presented to the Tauranga City Council this week concerning the detrimental effects of laying chipseal on existing hotmix-surfaced roads.
The Papamoa Residents and Ratepayers Association works on the principle that everything the Tauranga City Council does should be for the betterment of the community, no matter how big or small.
The TCC policy of chipsealing over existing hot mix roads does not provide any betterment or even maintain the status quo. Chipsealing increases road noise, looks untidy, leaches "tar" and road metal chips onto garage floors and pavements. In all, it is a cheap, backward step.
The council has said that this is its ongoing policy for road maintenance. Why? Recently in Papamoa we have seen a poor application of new chipseal which was an absolute travesty.
The PPRA supports the residents who are petitioning the council to stop chipsealing over existing hotmix roads. There are many unanswered questions: Do these roads need this chipsealing? What are the various options and standards of chipseal available?
We would like the TCC to publicly show the various chipsealing options available and the specifications. And then to show the costings for hotmix v chipsealing.
The chipseal solution the Tauranga City Council has chosen at present looks to be the wrong solution.
Philip Brown
Chairman Papamoa Residents & Ratepayers Association
A choice
There are possibly two major referendums coming up for your consideration, either before or at the next general election, both dealing with moral issues concerning both life and death - abortion and euthanasia (should it be harder to be born but easier to die or easier to be born but harder to die?).
If you are reading this at least you know you are now alive and have survived the first major moral issue dealing with your life, which is your conception through to your birth, over which you had no say whatsoever.
However, you will be being asked about where you morally and legally stand on an expectant mother's legal right to have an abortion, which will affect the lives of the future unborn. Where did your life begin? Was it at conception or at birth?
Because you are alive and presupposing that you survive any early demise, which may not involve your choice either, you will also one day be facing the second major moral issue which involves your death.
How will you choose to die? By natural causes, or by being euthanised? The choice is yours in the coming euthanasia referendum.
George Armitage
Gate Pa
It's up to all of us
The newspaper on August 6 epitomised the dilemma of climate change.
After many decades of being warned, people are facing the realities of increasing storms and sea level rising.
While they are seeking council assistance to address these realities, they are calling the council warning of the forthcoming rise "scaremongering".
What we are experiencing now is just the beginning of the effects, with increasing concerns of ice and tundra melting, ocean acidification and increasing storms.
Any protection that we create now will be strictly temporary without effective global action on the causes.
Later in the paper, Rachel Stewart analyses the conflict in the Green Party which is attempting to address the causes.
However, while the leadership is focusing on parliamentary procedures and engaging the principle interests in society with the emissions trading system, many of the members are desperate to get much more rapid response to the warnings coming from the scientific community.
While we cannot know in detail how things will develop, delays in addressing these causes can only increase the costs and complexities of responding to climate change.
It is up to all of us to do all we can to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Gray Southon
Tauranga
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