Make it worth it…

Jim Mylchreest says central government must address issues with local government –and he’s highlighted remuneration as a key one.

Mylchreest served nine years as Waipā mayor, effectively a full-time job with evening commitments added.

“Without another income you couldn’t afford to do the job,” he said.

“Central government politicians get superannuation, local government politicians can’t get Kiwisave.

“Central Government politicians who get voted out or decide to leave get three months’ notice, in local government you only get half the month you were working and it’s just cut off dead.”

He said younger politicians in local government will serve a term – “then they say, look we are in our principal money earning years, we can’t afford to do this for our family where it’s impacting on our superannuation.”

Mylchreest says an indication of the poor remuneration is that many people who run for council waited until they are retired and are receiving a pension.

“I think they probably need to reduce the number of councillors and pay them a more realistic remuneration for the amount of work they are doing – and really follow what central government politicians get.”

He “absolutely” agreed that the present remuneration impacted on the quality of local body councillors.

Local government was a good system.

“In fact, local government is the only democratic governance we’ve got – 40 per cent of central government MPs are appointed and they never face the electorate.”

He thought the country was getting “off

Murray Hunt

Furnishers

track” with co-governance.

“We need to be talking good governance and not co-governance in my view.”

He believed the council should spend more time working with central government – “but at least standing up to them when they are making stupid decisions that are not based on fact”.

Three Waters was a classic example, he said. Waipā had forgone a lot of community development to invest in its own three waters – “and now it’s going to be expected to fund other areas which have not bitten the bullet”.

He said central government should call local body councils to account where they were not performing, but disagreed with a blanket approach.

He argued people came to Waipā because of the level of services the district have.

His other gripe was that local government was hamstrung on how it raised finances – “and the moment rates go up central government is criticising”.

“Yet look at the percentage of gross domestic product over the last 100 yearsrates impact is just about level at five per cent and central government taxes had grown exponentially.”

Councils were criticised for trying to manage on a rate base when they had no other sources of income - and he believed those councils should receive finding from other quarters.

“Even if it was GST on development contributions… around Waipā I wouldn’t imagine there’s a section for less than $350,000 – and out of that the government creams $50,000 in GST and none of it comes back to the community.”

• Jim’s life after politics – see page 4.

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Start with the slip

In response to MP Louise Upston’s comment regarding the Piarere intersection (The News, February 16), the most immediate improvement to the intersection would be to make the slip lane far more obvious to the traffic on SH29, so drivers “know”, not to cross over to the left.

Drivers wait for the north bound traffic to pass on SH1, holding up the traffic behind them. The proposed roundabout is not going to alleviate this situation.

Slowing the traffic only sees long queues building up, just look at the end of the expressway at Cambridge, two lanes with a third converging from Cambridge into one. It brings traffic to a screeching halt and takes kilometres to get moving again. The queues at this intersection show the traffic counts from 2019 to support the roundabout are way out of date.

During a three-and-a-half-day court hearing I attended there was no mention of the foggy situation in this area. In August 2022 in fog, a heavy transport truck ran into the stopped traffic causing serious injury to the people.

Visibility is very important here and a graded separation is needed to keep the traffic flowing.

There has to be improvement to traffic flow and safety, the graded separation is the ultimate choice, not the planned roundabout.

If that intersection was in another country it would have been improved long ago. Do things once and do it right, Don’t waste money on holding up traffic.

(Abridged)

John Hansen Cambridge

Rules and regulations

In response to the Mayor, Susan O’Regan, comments last week, sitting on the fence is not a solution to an emerging problem. The recent disasters in the Hawke’s Bay and

Gisborne were exacerbated by the forestry slash.

The slash problem has occurred because of successive public organisations sitting on their hands behind a desk. So abiding by the rules is not what these kiwifruit orchard developers do well. They break the rules to see what they can get away with and the response of the council is weak.

The disaster in Turkey and Syria seems to have been compounded by weak regulations, so we need to be more proactive to avoid future issues, and stick to the rules and regulations which are there for the benefit of us all.

Grant Walker Ōhaupō

Barrier concerns

On Saturday there was yet another serious crash in the southbound lane of the Cambridge-Karāpiro road. Waka Kotahi are telling, not suggesting, a wire barrier will stop the accidents/ incidents on our rural roads. They should live here and see the line of cars back up with nowhere to go, this included young kids in a wire barrier area getting out of their cars and standing on the road to get a look.

My thoughts and opinions are: drop the barriers we are going ahead with and reduce the speed to 90kph coupled with a double yellow line all the way from Cambridge to Piarere. People respect the yellow lines In my opinion. At present they are coming off the 110kph expressway and still travelling 105kph when they reach the 80kph limit.

How does this compact me? I am the owner driver of Safe Drive NZ Travel Shuttle. Installing a wire barrier will increase my travel to Cambridge by around eight kilometres a trip four to five days a week, because they make it impossible to access driveways or turning points on the other side of the road. Added to this is road user charges, time and fuel, adding $1600 to

$2000 to my operating cost a year. Every other person travelling to work will have the same added costs, some will be adding up to 16 kilometres a day for their travel to Cambridge.

If any emergency service needs to get to a property, they will have up to an extra 16 km to drive before reaching the patient. I am also concerned that the enclosed lanes may present issues in the event of an emergency – our nearest defibrillator is only about 1.5km across the road, but 9km if I have to drive around the barriers.

David McNally Cambridge

Museum cost

That the cost of the new museum in Te Awamutu has blown out in five years to more than $28 million (The New, February 19) is abhorrent and unjustifiable in any circumstance, but especially now. Rather than another legacy vanity project that will continue to blow out and add yet more long term financial stress to already overburdened ratepayers, council should consign the project to the scrapheap. Even a small part of the projected amount would be better spent, for example, cleaning the streets, unblocking gutters, repairing roads, improving street lighting in places where it is woefully inadequate and repairing water leaks promptly.

Enough is enough! The contempt council continues to show its residents is exemplified by the public excluded discussions of a “project implementation report”. Ratepayers are paying for this white elephant so have the right to be consulted and have their views made known.

I suspect keeping residents in ignorance avoids a groundswell of opposition to the project. It is though unsurprising that the project has the support of mana whenua. Does that support extend to financial capital and revenue support? I doubt it.

Kelvin Dunn Te Awamutu

I think we owe a debt of gratitude to all the line workers, roading engineers, fire and emergency staff and the guys and girls out in that cyclone and in the days after who got to work getting our district up and running and keeping it connected to the rest of the country so quickly.

The aftermath of the cyclone in Hawke’s Bay and East Coast have shown us that communities are going to need to be selfsufficient for a time after a catastrophic event.

Each time there is a natural disaster, we see the scenes on the 6pm news of the total devastation to those communities.

Soon the stories of the local heroes will start to filter through. The people with the chainsaws getting the roads cleared, for example. These stories show the best of our communities.

Building resilience within your local community is the best chance you have of getting through in the immediate aftermath –by pooling resources and skill sets.

While this disaster is fresh in our minds, it pays to think to the next and prepare as I talked about a few weeks ago in my previous column.

Joining Neighbourhood Support is the easiest way to find out ideas for building resilience your community. Staying connected to your neighbours and seeing how you can help each other in a crisis will help you get through.

25,000L, 10,000L & 5,000L