Letters: Rotorua Lakes Council constantly under fire

The Rotorua Lakes Council is being questioned by readers about the financial loss of Mudtopia. Photo/File

It is very sad that there exists in our city people such as Glenys Searancke and Reynold Macpherson who do not appear to have any pride in our city at all.

As leaders of the Rotorua Residents and Ratepayers Group, and claiming to be speaking on behalf of their members, they are constantly denigrating everything that our council is doing, from promoting Crankworx through to flood control etc.

On a weekly basis, this group releases bulletins about the error of our ways, citing bungling mismanagement, secrecy in decision making, and poor financial management as to why, in their words, there needs to be a full scale purge of our council members and senior staff.

They are now accusing our council, and its staff, of lying.

In their letter to the LGA regarding our city's excellence awards, they state that our applications are based on deliberately false and misleading assumptions.

In their opinion, Rotorua is not entitled to any awards at all, and our city is so bad we, instead, have a cheek in asking for them.

I find their constant denigration of who and what we are to be problematic.

If so much that is being done is wrong and bound to cause financial failure to us all, how come the majority of us who live here are finding our place a good place to live in?

Is this group in fact only promoting its arguments for its own political gains?
This is, I think, the real reason for their angst.

John Pakes
Ngongotaha

Courage of convictions

At least councillor Trevor Maxwell has the courage of his convictions to defend Mudtopia (Local News, July 4).

Foolish but courageous. Especially, in my view, when all the others who supported it duck for cover behind a hapless official rather than admit that they lack the business experience to make such decisions.

No wonder councillors Peter Bentley, Mark Gould, Rob Kent and Raj Kumar quickly saw it as a disaster from the get-go.

The report was especially kind in not mentioning the mayor's poor judgement of trying to spend $90K on mud in South Korea, accompanied by her 'Cultural Ambassador'.

Has she now allowed Maxwell to take the heat on the massive waste of taxpayers' money?

But the message to council surely has to be "stay out of business or you will put out of business". (Abridged)

Harry Brasser
Rotorua

Am I the only one

Am I the only person in Rotorua who wonders how this illustrious council managed to spend $77,040 on social media?

And then on top of that $397,996 on festival directors for Mudtopia?

It must be marvellous spending other people's hard-earned money on frivolous ideas, and then to see Trevor Maxwell say he was disappointed the council wasn't going to run it again.

I went into the council on Wednesday afternoon to ask who the directors are and how much they were paid individually.

Once again, it seems that only Henry Weston can answer that and he wasn't about. Seems he'll ring me.

Can't wait to get that information.

Shame the other councillors who are not part of mayor Steve Chadwick's group of yes men/women don't find out on the ratepayers' behalf.

Wait for the spin doctoring to come out of the mayor's office once I find out and believe me, the poor ratepayers of Rotorua are going to know.

Karel Rottier
Rotorua

Comments endorsed

I would like to endorse the comments made by Merepeka Raukawa-Tait (Opinion, July 5) regarding the controversy over the appointment of Wallace Haumaha as a Deputy Commissioner of Police.

I have lived in Wallace's neighbourhood for more than 40 years and seen him bloom as his career progressed so I for one am extremely pleased about his appointment.

Ralph Dixon
QSM