Letters: Ditch sculpture and pay off debt

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I commend Kilwell's ingenuity to be able to construct the Hemo roundabout sculpture using a 3D printer. However, there was no mention of cost. 21hrs/day for 79 days, using 63km of PLA filament can't come cheap. How much has already been spent on the canned option? How much will the total cost be, including the money spent already? Council, please let ratepayers know. Having discovered the previous option was going to be nigh impossible to build, I thought it would have been prudent of the council to quietly let the project go and put the $500,000 to better use, e.g. paying what would be a tiny bit of debt, but debt repayment, nonetheless.

Around the same time as announcing the revamp of the sculpture, the mayor has written an open letter [Rotorua Daily Post ad, December 2]. It seemed to me that this letter was justifying the council's continued need for increasing "bad debt" for vanity projects. If debt needs to grow, make it "good debt", the type that will improve core services and make Rotorua more liveable for its residents.

I do like most of what is Rotorua, and it was a great place to raise our children, but I am now glad that they have all chosen to raise their families elsewhere. I wouldn't want the guilt of knowing they'd be paying off debt incurred by the excesses of the current management.

[ABRIDGED]
PADDI HODGKISS
Rotorua

With reference to your headline in Saturday's paper.

Yes, there are filthy tenants and there are a heck of a lot more greedy landlords. Perhaps tenants would be a lot more caring about their rented accommodation if landlords were a little less greedy.

When you are struggling to keep body and soul above water while working or trying to find work and having to feed and clothe children at extortionate supermarket prices and pay equally extortionate power prices and council rates to an equally uncaring council, I imagine that knowing your landlord is treating the place you have to call "home" as a commodity must be pretty galling.

I personally think the whole system of private landlords stinks. The only landlords should be councils charging reasonable rents.

JIM ADAMS
Rotorua