With really bad reports of flooding in Tauranga recently, we predictably have our elected Councillors leaping into the fray with the ratepayers cheque book, with a whopping $43 million.
Take a realistic look before leaping? In one area TCC are spending millions, and it only concerns six low lying houses. It makes more sense to buy them, remove them, rather than have this on-going problem repeat. It is a far more economical answer than burdening all ratepayers with millions more of debt and little chance of a permanent answer for the flooding.
Add to that the increase in rainfall, intensity of storms that will only cause a repeat in the future, sometimes a permanent solution is better than a patch up.
The real question though is how did this happen? Councillors should be seeking a public investigation into who, why and how this happened, it is clearly a repeat of the flooding issues across the city, it's not an isolated occurrence, that now causes millions of new debt for ratepayers.
Ratepayers, hold councillors to account this election!

Sam Bailey, Tauranga.