Thank you Peter Williams for your well informed comments in your column regarding our council (Opinion, August 25).
As you say, very high rates, very pathetic service. Yes there's an election next year and It would be great if Peter could focus his column on this council's inability to do their job - even better, perhaps run for Mayor?
It would be a blessing for Tauranga to have someone with an IQ bigger than their shoe size on the council.
We as locals have been voicing the council's inabilities for years but sadly our opinions fall on deaf ears. Their focus is on unused buses, pushbike tracks and idiotic visions of museums for a city that simply cannot afford luxuries because the basic needs are so pathetically inadequate; eg: rubbish, roads, infrastructure.
And yet their basic requirement to keep rate rises low is a duty they seem to really not care about.
Sadly It could be said that the blame may not entirely fall on the current council but the last successive 10 councils can share the incompetence label equally. Rubbish removal is a total disaster with only pathetic bandaid remedies coming at a very high price for the residents.
Gary Horan
Bayfair
I enjoyed reading Kristin Macfarlane's editorial (Opinion, August 25) about how her son wears pink swimming shorts, has his hair tied back and is often mistaken for a girl.
I have two grandchildren in London and my granddaughter, 8, had her hair cut short last year while I was there. She got called a boy so many times that when I picked her up from school she was crying so many times.
She suits short hair and does not want to look like every girl, eg: long hair tied in a ponytail.
I looked around at a school assembly I went to, she was the only girl with short hair, but looked beautiful (not just a grandmother's view, other parents agreed). She took to wearing a beanie to school and in the classroom because she was ridiculed so many times.
My grandson in the UK and in Melbourne, wore nail polish sometimes, the glittery the better, it's all part of growing up.
I really think it is the men of my generation that cannot cope with grandchildren wearing what they want; ie pink swimming shorts, maybe painting their nails, or a girl having short hair and they make totally unacceptable comments.
Wendy Galloway
Omokoroa
Having read (Local News, August 25), "Residents want to put the brakes on speeders", this happens daily along Churchill Rd, Judea, from the Waihi Rd end and is often used as a short cut to Judea and Sutherland Road.
There needs to be a go slow warning sign or a speed "hump" retarder before the "blind bend" besides the ones after leading up to Judea Rd and Sutherland Rd junction.
