Your letters: Who needs a bigger bureaucracy?

A Whanganui Unitary Council? Spare us . . .

Council waste

Having escaped from New Zealand's largest unitary council in 2016, I had an immediate attack of deja vu on reading Steve Baron's article (Chronicle, May 3) re a Frankenstein-like change of Whanganui District Council into a unitary council. Steve's header to his "promo" (Clayton's word for advertisement when you're not having an advertisement) includes "something new".

Ask any hard-working, rate-paying Aucklander what they think of their "new",
bureaucratic, spendthrift unitary council to hear home truths about profligacy and accountability. Similar beasts have been soundly rejected by other ratepayers in New Zealand, Wellington being the latest.

This promo asks about the $5.7 million cost of the regional council to Wanganui ratepayers: "... can we do all that ourselves in-house for a lot less than $5.7m?" The red herring response is: "Probably yes, especially when we have a competent chief executive such as Kym Fell along with his capable management team, who continually seem to find better ways of doing council stuff."

However, later this appears: "Going it alone may make it difficult to find specialist staff, who are often in scarce supply ... However, contracting out some services is always an option." It would not be an option but the norm.

As an aside, ponder why, when we elect councillors to run the council, they "contract out the services" we elected them to undertake? Which leads to staff increases, employment agency commissions to find the additional staff and new buildings purchased or built to house the expansion.

All of this happened and still happens in Auckland. Whanganui's "competent chief executive", Kym Fell, came direct from Regional Facilities Auckland, an Auckland Council-controlled organisation.

The promo's final irony is in the closing paragraphs: "I am sure a well-researched study would show savings would be made ... the public could then make a final decision in a referendum."

Considering Whanganui District Council's abysmal history of ignoring ratepayers' wishes in recent referendums, do you trust them to accept another clear majority vote from ratepayers? I don't.

VW BALLANCE
Westmere

Phone strategy

I am writing to share a small strategy that defeats the inconvenience to customers caused by the answerphone messages and options presented by big companies.

If you select the option that most affects the interests of the company, such as wishing to enrol as a new subscriber, there is a much higher chance you will get to speak to an actual person, most often straight away.

Let us unite to defeat a system that has very little regard for the comfort or convenience of the customer once you have taken the bait and are enlisted or contracted to the company.

Once you're hooked, as with politicians after an election, you cease to be of much concern, and there is little done to maintain a ship that is already sailing.

This sort of dishonesty is everywhere in the profit-driven world.

PAUL BABER
Aramoho

Road lesson

We could learn from Canada. It has a problem similar to us — drunken teenagers causing mayhem and death on our roads.

The road police in Canada had a terrible situation to deal with. A youth who was drunk caused the deaths of his two mates, but sending him to jail wasn't going to solve anything, so they hit on a new approach.

The judge and police decided the young man would go to every secondary school in the region and address the classes on what he had done.

It meant detailing his actions that caused the deaths of his friends over and over again. And to illustrate, the car which he so recklessly drove was displayed in the school yard.

The police now say that teenage drunk driving has dropped to an all-time low. We can learn from others who have tackled the problem head-on.

TED DOWNS
Whanganui