Reduce rates-yeah right

The Wellingtonian
The Editor

I read with interest your front-page story on Wellington rates (Nov 24). I guess the part of the equation that was left out was the very low turnout at the last election. I think you might find my web http://www.blogger.com/www.pepptalk.net of interest as there is considerable recent history on the rates issue. Around the time of WW1 ( I can't remember the exact date) there was a threatened rates rebellion in Wellington by residents. I was reading some early Evening Post publications in the Library when I came across it.

When I was first elected to the Wellington City Council I naively thought I could sort out the rates problem and I would have the support of other sensible councillors to do so. I was obviously in a delirious fevered state. While I never tire of telling Councillors that they are spending other peoples' money, rates continue to be a runaway train. Even worse while rates continue to rise so do user charges.

We have sold almost all our income earning assets and so now the cost of running the city falls almost entirely on the ratepayer. Thank you for mentioning the differential shift which will place an even higher burden on the residents who are unable to pass on the costs of rates, unlike the business sector. Now the residents are paying for those who use the City's services when they visit (tourists and outsiders) and work in it. As I think about it, that is quite wrong. Effectively it is a subsidy for the Central business sector.

When I was last in the USA a couple of months ago, I remember paying room tax in the hotels I stayed at, amongst other local taxes. With our currency being so weak against the other currencies we should do it here also. I also noted that the New York Times Newspaper ran a page 3 story on "New Zealand the most business friendly country in the world". I lamented that it didn't say "New Zealand The Most People Friendly Country."

I'm sure you will find my web history and blog of interest.

Who's in charge here?

At 6 0'clock this morning I received a phone call from an anxious local resident, Mr Hewett. I held my breath and waited after saying good morning. " I've been unable to sleep", he said. "This bird flu is a worry. I have the solution, we have to kill all the chickens." To this I explained that it's not just the domestic birds that are spreading the flu. "Then let's kill all the birds", he said. To this I replied that Mao did that and started a famine. I explained that when all the birds were killed the insects increased and ate all the crops. "Now please don't ring me at 6 in the morning as I think that it's bad news".

Now the problem of bird flu should be taken seriously, like any other threat to our survival, but it is only one issue we face. Lets put some of these things together into the category of civil disaster. Start by looking at the back of the Yellow pages under the heading, " Be Prepared For Disasters". If there is a run on food at the supermarkets in a time of disaster they will only have enough stock to last 2 0r 3 days at most, so your own emergency supply at home is really important.

While we're getting into a knot about issues that are constructed by the media to sell their tree devouring papers let's not take our eye off what is happening around us. The last thing you want is a media driven construction of reality. Talk to your neighbors and people on the street, celebrate life, as it's ticking like a clock and far too short to spend it worried about commercially media driven social constructions of reality. Just imagine the money the drug companies are making while the bird flu panic is on; a problem that is serious but not to overwhelm us-not yet.

In the meantime on 17th of November I attended a workshop on energy put on by the Ministry of Economic Development. These are well meaning people who in a very limited way are attempting to grapple with some serious issues. More and more policy people are having to think about Peak Oil ( see www.oilcrash.com for more information on this extremely important problem). So it was heartening to hear the issue of oil depletion get a good discussion but a little depressing to find out how ignorant many people were. It's amazing how many lightweights are employed to make decisions that impact on us all; its called the law of the lighterweights rising to the top.

Back at Wellington City Council the mice are at work again. A Funding And Activity Working party has been assembled to continue the work of reviewing the rates.

Over the last two trienniums commercial rates have been steadily shifted onto the residents' rates bill. It is an issue that has been successfully glossed over by the commercial media. I leave you to draw your own conclusions. Somewhere in the caution of what the role of a Local Authority is charged with is the protection of the public interest. So far it seems to be the handmaiden of the profit takers. Speaking about such things, now is the time to stand up to the developers and demand from your elected representatives that we have a City for Us and not a city of tall buildings and developers who have lap dogs on Council.

People before profit at Boyle Kawasaki

What a wonderful thing it is to meet people in business that have your genuine interest at heart. One business that puts people before profit is the oldest family motorcycle business in town. I'm talking about Boyle Kawasaki on Adelaide Rd, Newtown, and it is well overdue that I do so. I bought my first motorcycle from Don Boyle who is no longer in the business. However that is how I met the wonderful but a little eccentric, Boyle family. The original business closed but re-opened a long time ago under the management of the Boyle brothers Mark and John.

Motorcyclists know this business for its unique culture of casualness but no nonsense common sense advice on anything you please. It is a special fraternity of care for the big family of customers who are made friends of by these unusual men. These guys can be guaranteed to call a spade a shovel. Not only that but they exhibit a level of candor and honesty that is rare in business today. This week I pay a special tribute to this business and the wonderful way in which the Boyles were raised by their super loving parents, Mrs and Mrs Boyle senior, who are still seen in the shop from time to time. Mrs Boyle senior is still active but unintrusive in this fabulous motocycle shop that is staffed by excellent mechanical staff headed by Mark Boyle and his stoically mechanical off-sider Steven.
If you are thinking about a future in motorcycling because you care about conservation of the environment and saving precious fossil fuel make sure you pay this family business a visit first.

A lost Heritage

On the 10th of November crusader Artist Nick Dryden opened his exhibition of "50 . Stones " at Old St Pauls. This exhibition of stones and gold inscriptions from the demolished Maritime Building are a timely reminder of our loss of built heritage and our failure to protect the best of our culture. In this sense Mr Dryden takes on the traditional role of artist as prophet and speaks for the community, with this provocative work. Naming the buildings and the architect he speaks to us of our loss. Heritage buildings of wood and stone by the labour of craftsmen not forgotten but lost to the demolition hammer and substituted with the profit takers works of steel and glass to be knocked down again in twenty years. See this exhibition of headstones to a fallen heritage in the grave yard at Old St Pauls .

Wellington Water Front Privatised

Iron clad secrecy around the Wellington City Council's 99 year lease agreement of a retail development took place yesterday at the Strategy and Policy Committee. The land is next to the failed Queen's Wharf shopping centre. The new building would be four stories and not in sympathy with surrounding buildings.

Councillors were not told what the figure was for the transaction, that is effectively a sale of prime public land. I was joined in opposition to the sale by Councillors Ruben, Ritchie, Wade-Brown and Cook . The Dompost failed to report who voted for the privatising, preferring to give the impression that it was unanimously supported by Council, but noted two Councillors queried the terms.

In reality it was a protracted battle that saw the Variation 17 champions win the day. Those voting with the Mayor and profit takers were Cr Mckinnon, Cr Shaw, Cr Morrison, Cr Wain, Cr Gill, Cr Foster, and Cr Armstrong. Absent were Councillors Ahipene-Mercer and and Cr Goulden.

Lambton Quay expenditure of $7.97 million over 10 years was opposed by myself and Ritchie. I argued that rates were a runaway train and that such an extravagant spend up was done on the back of the shift in the commerical rate onto the residents' rate bill. Added to this I said that Newtown should be receiveing funding and not the Central Business Centre that had been given rates relief at the expense of the residents.

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A CITY FOR US ?

"Clean Up The Drunks", the headline read on the front page of the DomPost Weekend. It was nothing new that was being stated, just a tired old theme of bashing the homeless and the associated moral panic that the media fans as the economy shows signs of cracking.

What were the campaigners for a sanitised city comparing us with in the capital? Obviously new MP Blumsky had not lived through the prosperity of the sixties and seventies to know that it wasn't a City looking second rate but the economy. It was the outcome of the free market that had left more people on the streets. Mr Blumsky had been a promoter of big business and the champion of the abolition of the rates differential. Make the residents pay for business was the motto of this new group of boosters and promoters who took hold the the public purse. Wellington Alive stormed the city with the shoe man Blumsky holding the flag of the Council's new right.

Lower rates for business and fewer council houses was the agenda under Blumsky. The Council became ambivalent about the role of housing as a core service. Nothing was done to upgrade the housing stock and tenants were made to feel insecure with the Council housing review.

Clearly Blumsky was a factor in creating the new climate of intolerance of the causalties that the right had engineered. Now he proclaims a cleanup.

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