Well ahead of the game?

Isn’t Masterton District Council getting ahead of itself by calling for tenders from architects for the proposed civic centre?

How could anyone, in their right mind, tender to design a building when no one knows where it will be?

I certainly don’t claim any architectural knowledge.

But surely knowing the site and the ground underneath it would be fundamental in designing the required foundations — or is the council expecting a design from the ground up, and someone will work out the foundations when they know where it’s going? What does that do to the $30m budget?

Still not answered is why council disregarded the Haworth HTL report?

I suspect that the ‘gang of six’ want to get things locked in place so an incoming council in October 2022 can’t get out of it. That’s a s**t of a legacy to leave the town.

Graham Dick

Masterton

Budget-busting council

South Wairarapa council met on September 15 and approved an increase in mayor and councillors salaries of about 1.5 per cent.

Council stated rather pompously that it ‘cannot be declined’ [as if anyone had any intention of declining it?].

Then, it was very painful to listen to the next debate to increase the discretionary allowance for technology from $1190 to $2150 a year for each councillor.

It sounded as if none of them ever watch Netflix, use a mobile phone or run a business of their own. They needed to have their technology funded by ratepayers.

However, a councillor did ask that the impact on ratepayers for the unbudgeted cost of the increase and the message it was giving to ratepayers after stating in the “Explanation of Rates” document that it was ‘looking for savings’ be considered.

After an intolerable amount of self-serving discussion, the council added $9600 to this year’s budget straight into its own pockets.

That is a total of over $21,000 annually. Good grief. How many new mobile phones do you need every year? [I note some councillors voted against it.]

The chief financial officer [Katrina Neems] indicated only $1500 of the increase was budgeted.

That leaves $8000 of additional discretionary costs with no regard for the impact on ratepayers and the budget, just their own financial benefit.

Really? Daphne Geisler Martinborough