Spending for the sake of it

Councillor Steve Morris' column ‘Straight from the city council' (The Weekend Sun, April 28) cannot go unchallenged. And, in fact, I find his column quite troublesome and others may say, disturbing and quite frankly the Mount Ward deserves better representation.

Cr Morris seems to believe that just because the money is sitting there that it needs to be spent but of course the other option is to return it to the people who paid it, which is the developers and then the people who purchased the properties that the fee was applied to.

Just because money is collected from developers does not necessarily mean that the money has to be spent. And in fact if it cannot be spent, in reality it should not have been collected in the first place.

I cannot recall a case where Tauranga City Council has ever had to return fees collected and I doubt whether it has ever occurred in NZ as council staff will always find a way to spend collected money, one way or the other and I'm sure that if there was desire then this would be achieved.

From letters to the editor and local comment, the bulk of the public do not want a redeveloped Phoenix Carpark and a recent poll among retailers also revealed strong opposition, so don't fix something that isn't broke.

The council has created a smoke and mirrors effect by the parks department purchasing the carpark off the transportation department for $4.2 million. The remaining stated cost of $1.27 million will create the most expensive toilets in Tauranga along with reconfiguring the carparks in order to significantly reduce the number available to the local shoppers.

Don't defend the indefensible Cr Morris and rather than spend, for the sake of spending, get the staff employed by council to come up with other options and if this is impossible return the money.

M Baker, Bethlehem.

TCC councillor Steve Morris replies:

'Disgruntled former city councillor Mike Baker is wrong. Section 204 of the Local Government Act 2002 requires that money collected from developers 'must be spent” on what it was collected for.

The present Phoenix proposal results in a net loss of some 25 carparks which is disappointing and he is within his rights to suggest that ratepayers write a cheque for $5.47m ($219,000 per carpark) and repay the developers.

However, I would suggest that would be very poor financial management and it is worth remembering that Mr Baker didn't suggest that council should stop collecting this money when he was a councillor.”




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