Letters: Let's learn from the council's mistake

Malcolm Short (left) and secretary Murray Patchell stand on iwi land a four-year court battled has ruled was wrongly rated by the Rotorua Lakes Council. Photo/Ben Fraser

The headline on the front page of the Rotorua Daily Post on May 26 certainly made me stop and ponder.

As I read "Mistake costs ratepayers thousands". This headline was referring to one court case, one incident and one mistake by the council.

Let's define mistake. "An error in action, calculation, opinion or judgment caused by poor
reasoning, carelessness, insufficient knowledge". In summary, "To misunderstand, misinterpret or evaluate wrongly".

All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.

Mistakes, obviously show us what needs improving. Without mistakes, how would we know what we had to work on?

People will only fail to learn, if they do not learn from failing. Has the council learned by its mistakes? Or have the ratepayers learned from council's mistakes?

Is there room for improvement? How do you evaluate council's performance?

In the next election, let's hope the ratepayers "make no mistakes", and vote for a council that learns from its mistake and earns millions, rather than wasting ratepayers' money.

Waste not, want not? (Abridged)

TRACEY MCLEOD
Rotorua

Enjoyable Rotorua Daily Post columnist

Cheers to Rachel Stewart. I love reading her articles in our Rotorua Daily Post.

The latest one being about mycoplasma bovis (those poor cows). It makes sense.

Fewer cows, fewer problems, less stress on the animals and better for the environment, then hopefully they could do away with PKE (palm kernel) as a supplementary feed as we should be boycotting this product to protect the forests.

Thanks to organic farmers. The best way to go.

YVONNE KILMORE
Pukehangi