Open letter to Tauranga City Council from Papamoa Residents and Ratepayers Association
Rubbish
“You have made the decision to take control of the kerbside rubbish collection. 4 new plastic bins to be purchased for every household at a cost of $8 million and paid in our rates.
You rejected a weekly “Pay-as-you-Throw” option for rubbish, a fairer scheme and one adopted recently by WBOP. It's the best way to achieve waste minimisation. If people have to pay whether they put a bin out or not they will put a bin out every time and fill it with any old thing.
The decision was made in secrecy under the advice of council staff. And there was no consultation on the final decision – again on council staff advice. Who is working for whom?
You won’t tell us the cost for the collection service in year 2,3 and so on. What are you hiding? Are ratepayers being overcharged? Already you have signalled future annual cost increases. Mayor Tenby Powell wrote recently “there is a greater good at stake here which means all households will have to make a modest contribution.” Yeah right, the ratepayers have no choice!!
So, what will change? All waste, recycling and food scraps will still be trucked out of Tauranga, rubbish collection will be fortnightly not weekly, all rates will rise, thousands of existing bins will be dumped, local rubbish businesses will close, $8 million dollars of rate money will be spent on new plastic bins. Tauranga will still remain around average for domestic rubbish in comparison with other NZ cities.
This is a poor decision made by a Council who failed to really think about new ways to reduce the domestic waste volumes. It is just changing to make Tauranga align with the rest of NZ.”
RAYEPAYERS, do you feel strongly enough to demand that TCC include a “Pay-as-you-Throw” scheme, allow residents to opt out, allow residents to reject the bins, request a Referendum on the rubbish decision. If you do, go to www.taurangarubbishoptions.com/submission and sign the Online Petition.
Rates
Rates are paid by ratepayers for the services they receive, the upkeep and resilience of these services and provision of civic amenities. Tauranga has some of the highest rates in NZ.
Why is Tauranga missing so many civic amenities expected of a NZ City? Because successive councils have been using ratepayer money to subsidise new residential developments and expand the city for the last 15-20 years. Say this was $20 million dollars per annum, this could be $300 million dollars in the last 15 years which should have been available for civic amenities. (Museum , Stadium etc )
The PRRA wants the continual rate increases to STOP. We want the Tauranga City Council to cut back your budget, your consultant costs, staffing and projects. Stop subsidising future residential growth by existing ratepayers. Provide the essential civic amenities. Upgrade our woeful roading.
Roading
Papamoa is a growth area and still the main beach road is more akin to a country road. For years we have been promised a hot mix sealed road when traffic flows reach a magic number of movements per day. This has now been exceeded, but still no works are planned, and it looks like another broken promise. TCC -- what is going on?
The other feeder road to Papamoa East is Te Okuroa Drive, promised as a 4 lane road, but built as a tight 2 lane road which is dangerous and inadequate. When is the upgrade to 4 lanes going to start?
There is also a desperate need to have safe pedestrian crossings on Te Okuroa Dr. And the interchange with the TEL to the future Te Tumu development. When????
And when we venture to Tauranga, when is the Turret Rd bridge being upgraded to 4 lanes? There can’t be any excuses left now. This is a good example of no investment in the roading network of Tauranga.
Council Decisions in Secrecy
One can only regard with scorn the incongruity (perhaps shamelessness would be a better description) of a majority of the councillors on the 14th of July resolving to follow the staff recommendation to exclude the public from the meeting at which the proposed rubbish system was being considered and immediately afterwards resolving, again by a majority, to “not undertake additional community engagement or consultation before deciding on the kerbside waste collection options outlined in the confidential report.” The final decision was made on 25 August, it was an 8-3 decision. And the decision was made public one month later on 25 September 2020.
A confidential report and a public-excluded meeting smacks of secrecy, clandestine goings-on, not the openness and transparency we were promised.
From BOP Times 6 October re rubbish decision… “Most of the hundreds of messages the council has had since then have been negative feedback of people wanting changes to the service…. If we’ve had 70 people tell us they don’t like it then we’ve had 10 tell us they do like it… but the council is confident the complainers are a vocal minority”
And from BOP Times 25 Sept 2020 “Satisfaction with city council hits new low.” Only 51% of respondents to the survey were satisfied or very satisfied with the council.
Often the ratepayers know best and Community Boards may be a good option for the future in Tauranga.
Meantime FIX the BASICS: RUBBISH, RATES & ROADING