Letters to the Editor

 

Open letter: Water rates
Maungaturoto’s ratepayers have paid out approximately $800,000 in water rates in two years.

The Dairy Company must have contributed on top of this for their filtered water as well. It is anybody’s guess how much.

We are expected to pay 15 percent more next year, a charge well ahead of inflation or interest rates, so this should extract another $500,000 at least. A tidy sum collected for which we have seen little maintenance or upgrading going around this town. How many more years will this extortion go on?

How much will the upgrade of water infrastructure cost? As this is the reason we were given for the hefty increase in charges, could we not have some transparency?

We suspect that this money is being syphoned off to service the debt.

Dargaville is also staggering under the same increases in charges. Can we not have some open discussion about these costs also? Why the need to charge the full annual charge on a 6-monthly bill? What a Christmas present!

Brian Dent Greypower Maungaturoto


No need to rush
Just read the letter from Marty Searle re school bus (Mangawhai Focus Nov 17). I could not agree with him more. It happens here in Waipu as well. I live on Cove road and always slow to 20 km/h when passing the school bus – much to the annoyance of some people following me – and often get the tooting and one fin-ger salute.

Tragically we had a fatal here some years back so let's not again go there please peeps. We live in a beautiful part of the world where the pace is a bit slower than city life so let's enjoy.

As a footnote I'm not sure if this is the Marty Sear-le that I know, but if it is, he has a high regard for all children being a member of Variety: the Children's Charity for many years and giving unselfishly of his time to make things a little better for those kids that need it.

Paul Carr
Waipu

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