Letters to the Editor

 

Decision-making dilemma
Who makes decisions and who pays? Commissioner John Robertson raised the question that the newly elected will have to decide who pays for future expenditure.

The current policy of the district amounts to this: a poor family living in a garage and with a modern composting toilet that avoids any pollution pays about $250 each year to subsidise a flushing toilet for a multi-million dollar property owner at the waterfront in Mangawhai. Can this possibly be right and just? Everyone who stands for this election has to answer this question.

One lesson we have to learn from the EcoCare disaster is: Communities are much more effective at finding appropriate solutions to their own problems than professional politicians with their ‘experts’. Facilities like the Mangawhai Waste Water Treatment Plant need to be user-financed, owned and operated.

When we take the current policy for Mangawhai Waste Water as a model for the future we will only create an expensive bureaucratic playground for corporations, professional politicians, and ‘expert advisors’.

The annual payment of $250 that the Council currently imposes district-wide to bail out the Mangawhai debacle should be paid by those who created the debacle, not the current ratepayers, and especially not the ratepayers outside the area affected.

Until the costs are allocated where they should be, let’s be honest and call this $250 by their correct name: A Bad Management Fee (BMF), or a Corruption Fee (CF) and generate public awareness that this disastrous policy must be reversed.

Christian Simon
Mangawhai