The Hairini plan was to include the widening of 15th Ave, Turret Rd and the bridge leading up to the Welcome Bay roundabout.
What that means is that commuters from Welcome Bay are going to continue to be stuck in traffic jams for the forseeable future - as the Government has handballed 15th Ave-Turret Rd to debt-laden Tauranga City Council which, for some financially deranged reason, accepted it.
About 15 months ago I wrote the council was so desperate to rid itself of Route K and its $60+ million debt that it had signed a secret deal with the Government to take it off its books.
And no wonder they kept it secret as the decision will see we ratepayers being, in my view, stitched up like Frankenstein's monster.
The NZ Transport Agency gets Route K, but TCC keeps its debt until 2035 and gets to pay for half of the Hairini project - about $50 million.
When it can afford to, that is.
Great deal huh?
So how did we find out about this roading deal?
Did our employees - Tauranga City Council - tell us about it?
Yeah, nah. Just like they didn't mention spending $1.3 million secretly upgrading its computer system which "suddenly" found itself about to become obsolete.
We little mushrooms were informed when Independent MP Brendan Horan asked a question in Parliament about it to Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee who was happy to tell us the bad news.
And it isn't just the former council to blame, the current mob has reportedly affirmed the deal. Thanks a bunch, you lot.
Boy, don't we need some transparency at Willow St.
DON'T they feed their football stars in Uruguay?
You'd have to wonder that after striker Luis Suarez chomped down on the shoulder of an Italian defender during the World Cup Finals.
Suarez and his teeth are no strangers to other players' flesh, he has been suspended twice before for the offence.
The first time was for seven weeks for biting a Dutch opponent - earning the nickname The Cannibal of Ajax - and for 10 weeks after munching into a Chelsea player in the English Premier League.
Uruguyan officials played down the matter and typically portrayed the poor petal as being picked on.
Fifa acted, sort of, and banned him for four months from all football. It should have been life.
Suarez kept a low profile after the match.
I reckon he was probably hiding during daylight in an earth-filled coffin somewhere.
AS YOU are reading this the huge crane barge that was supposed to be helping to remove the Rena's accommodation block is slowly heading its way to Singapore.
Is that a Singapore on Motiti Island, you ask? Where the rusting hulk of the Rena lies?
No, I'll answer, it is Singapore, Singapore. Nowhere near the Rena.
Just goes to show the owners and insurers of the Rena must be pretty confident of not being forced to completely remove the wreck from Astrolabe Reef.
I READ with amusement a letter from reader Jim Sherlock snidely asking me, "as an award-winning journalist", to find out who paid for the red dolphin placards (with handles) that "spontaneously just happen to appear" at the recent Save the Maui's Dolphin protest in the city. I don't need to investigate, Jim, as I would expect they were provided by the organisers of the march and therefore most likely by Labour.
That is the Labour Party before David Cunliffe did a shameless about-turn over the issue.
Watching Cunliffe on TV it comes through quite strongly to me that every time he is asked a question he mulls over how many votes he will lose if he answers one way or the other and goes with the one that will cost the fewest.
The fact a political movement provided them - and quite possibly the little dolphin coffins as well - doesn't mean the vast majority of marchers were not, as stated in my column, a good cross section of our city.
richard@richardmoore.com
Richard Moore is an award-winning Western Bay journalist and photographer.
