Would you trust this council with your money?
The Council’s only answer to its financial problems is to endlessly milk the residents and ratepayers dry. Last year an effective average nine point nine per cent rates increase – ten per cent. That’s just obscene.
The current Councillor for Waitemata poured fire and brimstone on the Mayor and council over the ten per cent increase – and then promptly voted for it. Tricky, cynical footwork that I hope the voters of Waitemata and Gulf will remember.
He’s against intensification at the moment, because he can smell the political wind, but what’s the betting he’ll flip flop on that, too. There’ll be more tricky footwork from him. He is very adept at appearing to oppose the Mayor and majority on council and then you find he’s voted for virtually everything that Len Brown and his mob wants.
It’s time to put the brakes on rate increases. This Council believes it has an inexhaustible source of revenue – your wallets. It’s wrong and it must stop now.
Why can’t we at least aspire to holding rates? Why do we need to keep putting rates up by four or five or ten per cent a year when inflation is running at less than one per cent a year?
