What is it that Rotorua has got that Hamilton hasn't? Quite a lot it appears.
For starters Sulphur City has the best fish and chips I've tasted in the North Island and, certainly, it has the cheapest petrol.
(Try the top notch fare for yourself at the chippie on the main road strip, not in the off-road shopping centre, at Te Ngae and fill up with 91 octane at a regular discount of 12c a litre to the prevailing price elsewhere at Mobil Te Ngae.)
But there's more: there are two sides to arguments about whether Hamilton is a good place to live compared with others and whether the city council is really doing the city a favour with its long-held sports-biased policies and practices.
Take petrol again. While one Rotorua station offers 91 octane petrol at the 12c/l discount, several offer it at 8c/l less; only two or three charge the higher price that is general in Hamilton. Imagine what that saving does to your pocket. And, don't tell anybody, but he who brought cheaper petrol to Rotorua plans to do it in Hamilton next year. If you don't believe me, wait and see.
And what wouldn't you give as a ratepayer to have Rotorua District Council to deal with rather than its Hamilton counterpart? While Hamilton has clocked up $448 million worth of debt and has to borrow to pay the $100,000 a day interest, the RDC funds much of its capital development out its substantial operating surplus. RDC clocked up a $23 million surplus on its activities in 2006 and while hiked insurance premiums have dented results more recently, the council actually has a series of trading surpluses reaching back for a decade.
What's more, the RDC began its belt-tightening and budget slashing eight years ago when Hamilton was still spending up large. And, guess what, the RDC balance sheet has nothing to hide. It's so simple and clear an 8-year-old could understand it. By contrast trained accountants have striven vainly for days to fully penetrate the Stygian darkness of HCC's accounts.
And while Hamilton has been saddling ratepayers with the debt of the century to back grandiose money losers like the Rugby Stadium, the cricket ground, the Claudelands indoor events arena and the V8s lemon, Rotorua has been spending its hard-earned (not borrowed) cash on improving the amenities that make the city New Zealand's top tourist mecca.
Case in point is the Geyser City's proud new venue for conferences, conventions and sporting events, the Energy Events Centre. Cost: $28 million but only 25 per cent of this has been funded by ratepayers - and that largely out of savings from operating surpluses. As an added string to Rotorua's tourism bow, it is not only paying for itself but also making a profit.
To Rotorua, sport is not the first priority; economic development and tourism are. Business comes first because that brings in the money and provides the jobs.
HCC could have put full time jobs in reach of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of its citizens, if it had spent the millions it squandered on sport into attracting new manufacturing and other industries to Hamilton, luring them if need be with the promise of a four- or five-year rates holiday.
Putting business first - not sport - and helping create jobs is just what Hamilton City Council should have been about and should still be about.
If you don't believe me, just ask almost any jobless person, parent of teenagers or ratepayer.
John Aldworth is a former Hamilton journalist who sails, broadcasts, still writes and likes exploring off-beat issues.