Letters to the editor: Council preoccupied with spending money

The Rotorua Lakes Council has been preoccupied with spending money, says a reader. Photo / File

I read your article outlining the reasons by mayor Steve Chadwick and council manager Stavros Michaels for choosing a foreign company to invest in our stormwater system (News, August 25).

Council does not want to buy into the Government's three waters rescue package because it only arrests and reduces deterioration.

What council wants, in my view, is a buy-in involving megabucks to fix a very big problem.

Since I arrived in Rotorua five years ago, the council has been, in my view, preoccupied with spending money on items such as imported mud, cycleways which never got used and the world's biggest 3D sculpture.

Then came the flood of 2018 and the consequences of global warming could no longer be ignored.

Our long-neglected infrastructure became an urgent embarrassment.

(Abridged)

Lesley Haddon
Rotorua

Social distancing in store

I made a rare visit to a local supermarket a few days ago, wearing a mask for the first time, and I proceeded to uplift my required items as swiftly as possible.

Sadly, my experience of fellow mask-wearers was similar to Maurice McKeowan's observations (Letters, August 26).

I saw two mask-wearing women leaving the store and also one store employee.

Customers generally had no thought of social distancing and the Covid epidemic seemed to be totally absent from their minds.

A school-age child darting everywhere from his trolley-pushing mother blocked my entry to the aisles and, after easing myself through one of his sporadic, transient gaps, I was confronted by mindless people barricading the aisles with centrally parked trolleys and their own bodies positioned to cause a choke-hold on the way through and one aisle was a complete log-jam of carts and bodies and had to be avoided.

My access to a required product was blocked by a woman inches from the shelf who was oscillating from side to side, studying items, whilst apoplectic with indecision and unaware of distancing and the needs of others.

Judging from what I experienced, I would think we are extremely lucky in this country to have avoided a more extreme outbreak but, as far as the present Auckland outbreak is concerned, sadly I believe the jury is still out.

David Sykes
Tauranga

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