“Only Auckland Council could spend $600,000 and not know, or apparently care, whether the money spent is achieving anything” says Jo Holmes from the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance, reacting to news that no one knows whether its contracted work catching taggers has resulted in prosecutions.

“This is a perfectly good $600,000 of ratepayers money, and no one can say whether it’s been thrown down the drain. It is emblematic of the culture at Auckland Council, and ratepayers have had enough.”

“If the Council is hiring private investigators to give information to the Police, it is the complainant. The fact the Council has no idea shows that rather than making any effort to fix Auckland’s tagging problem, it’s just throwing our money at it, and not caring about any follow-through whatsoever.”

“Earlier in the year the Council won a national award for wasting money in relation to spending $90,000 on a goat-cull in the Hunuas, that resulted in zero goats being culled. Here the Council spent $600,000 to nab taggers, and they don’t even bother to find out whether a single one has been prosecuted. It’s a pattern, and it’s not one ratepayers are winning from.”

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