I would like to concur with every word of Bruce Beckett's letter of Feb 4. entitled 'Voter empowerment, city partners' The current situation is a disgrace, and council staff should immediately be put on notice that a ‘best tender' philosophy will henceforth be sacrosanct, and that the entire process will without question be opened to ratepayer scrutiny.
Many years ago in another city, I enjoyed a couple of ales with a bunch of businessmen in the 19th at my local golf club.
The conversation centered on how business was going, and became focussed on dealing with local and central government. In response to my comment that I understood government contracts were regarded as very desirable and very profitable, a somewhat embarrassed little titter ran around the table until one guy muttered with a bit of a smirk ‘You could say so'! Ensuing comments revolved around people spending other people's money, and I noted that there was a clear ring of truth about the whole discussion.
Years later, a similar discussion took place here in Tauranga at a similar venue, with an almost identical outcome.
Council staff are ripping us off, having fun with it, and councillors are not doing theit jobs by exercising proper control. For the Crosby faction this seems to be an acceptable ‘status quo”, so rank and file councillors need to toughen up, dig deep, and force changes.
Council have managed to cancel or defer 30 million dollars of spending. Great! That will ease the debt spiral. Let them now do the same on another 10 million, and we will have a rating level that will give long suffering ratepayers the breather that they need.
Garry Mitchell, Welcome Bay.