Alexander (Sandy) Milne

The opening paragraph of Diane McCarthy’s story, “Fears of massive spending spree ahead of rates cap”, in Wednesday’s Beacon was misleading and worrying. Her wording began, “Neither Whakatāne’s mayor nor a ratepayers’ group intent on lowering rates are happy with the rates capping ...”.

Later wording made it clear that the Government’s reining in of rates is very much welcomed by the Whakatāne Action Group (WAG), whose chairman John Howard’s complaint was related to the far too lengthy delay in its introduction.

Our new mayor, Nandor Tanczos, and council must cease pussy-footing around on this major concern for poorer ratepayers and those on low fixed incomes.  

Mr Tanzcos’ comment that the rates capping was “well-intentioned but poorly thought out” by the Government deserves rebuke. He’s one to talk.

The Beacon has run many stories showing that ratepayers in our district remain victims of multiple poorly thought out and abandoned costly projects dreamed up by our past councils and all rammed through despite former Mayor Victor Luca’s opposition, but with Mr Tanczos’ support.  

Mr Tanczos was complicit in organising the rising debt levels he complained about in his August 29 Beacon opinion piece, “What the heck is happening with the rates?” In that column, he added that the Mitchell Park work (costing almost half a million dollars), provided “some decent public toilets ...” and omitted to add that the loo would be locked up for 95 percent of the time.  

In other words, ratepayers were providing an expensive “Portaloo” for strollers at the market who didn’t want to walk 150 metres to the existing public toilet.

In last Wednesday’s Beacon, he was quoted as saying, “We all want rates to go down, but what is being proposed is largely the same system that has failed across the Tasman, with pretty dire consequences for local communities in New South Wales and Victoria”.

Who said that rates capping is not working for the 40 percent of councils that have them in Australia?

If they weren’t working, they could easily have removed the caps. They are working for those who cannot afford all the shiny and unnecessary amenities.

Mr Tanczos then claims that caps “just lead to underinvestment in critical infrastructure, reduced public services, and then every few years a spike, and that all the evidence is that it does not work for communities and adds massive costs to councils.”

He talks about critical infrastructure, which I assume are water services, transport and solid waste management etc. But if we look up page 28 of Whakatāne District Council’s Long-Term Plan 2024-34, we can see that those items only add up to 48.5 percent of council spending over the 10 years.

So, the question is how much of the rest is necessary?

It appears to me that our mayor didn’t want rates to go down. He is arguing for them to keep going up. That would be okay if rises were capped at the rate of inflation. But will they? No.

Mr Tanczos should cease making statements without proof.

I have more advice for our council. Do not appoint the 27 extra council workers which were sought last term, and which Dr Luca succeeded in postponing until after the recent election.

The council is already overstaffed, especially with seven instead of five over-paid managers.