Whoever is behind the advertisements headed Tauranga City Finances Out of Control should clearly understand that if there is a cost, of a service provided by a Council, and the user of that service is not paying for that cost then someone else will have to pay and generally that is all ratepayers.
I am specifically referring to the CASE 4 Building Consent Fee example in the latest advertisement. The current Council has a policy of wherever possible that growth will pay for growth and this basically means that the people creating the demand for additional infrastructure such as roading, sewerage, water, storm water, parks etc will pay the lion's share of that cost so that existing ratepayers do not.
Should, as seemingly suggested in the advertisement, the Council was to reduce all future building consent fees to a similar level of say Rotorua then the people coming to Tauranga from outside of the city, such as Auckland, would contribute significantly less to the required infrastructure needs (that their coming to Tauranga basically causes) and all existing ratepayers would pay more.
The question has to be, is this fair and reasonable or should growth continue to pay for growth?
Cr Mike Baker, Bethlehem.