Re: R Paterson's letter ‘No need for new stadium' (The Weekend Sun, August 12).

R Patterson is quite correct in all his comments on a new stadium.

The function of elected council officials is to see that a city or town is run efficiently in a fiscally responsible way, seeing that ratepayers are provided with efficient and cost-effective services and infrastructure.

Councillors are not elected to toss money round like a man with no arms. They are there to manage ratepayers' money in a fiscally-responsible way.

The current Tauranga City Council is a bunch of squander bugs of the worst kind, who want to be memorialised of their tenure without giving a toss to the huge debts they will incur on behalf of the very few long-suffering ratepayers in the area – probably less than 70,000 of us.

Every ratepayer should be objecting to the irresponsible proposed spending of the current mob and make sure at the upcoming local body elections that they don't tick any names of the current incumbents. We need people in council who are prepared to run the council efficiently and sensibly and keep their hands in their pockets and out of ours.

A Bourne, Bethlehem.