Chief Executive gets Yellow Card

Rotorua District Residents and Ratepayers

There are two main reasons why the Yellow Signs were taken down last month, and why the Chief Executive (CE) has been given a Yellow Card by the RDRR.

Cr Glenys Searanke, Chair of the RDRR, explained that “The Yellow Signs had achieved their mission; to generate awareness, provoke public engagement and invite people to imagine positive alternatives to current Council policies and practices. The suggestions are summarized at our website and we have moved on into community consultations.”

The second reason, she said, was to stop Council officials from bullying residents with threats of fines and wasting ratepayers’ money on purchasing legal advice. The Yellow Signs were always compliant with the duration and size criteria for temporary signs in the District “But the CE is locked into bully mode,” said Dr Reynold Macpherson, the RDRR’s mayoral candidate. “At our recent meeting he escalated his silly threats; either apply for resource consent for permanent signs or the owners will face legal action. As if they are permanent.

As if consent would be given.”

“Fortunately, the Compliance Officer present agreed that Council had only ever considered the signs as temporary. So we countered with two options; accept our rights to freedom of expression in a democracy and stop wasting ratepayers’ money, or, create a reconciliation process to handle the four formal complaints actually received. But no. It was as if the CE was drunk with power and limitless ratepayers’ funds and implacably determined to take legal action against honest citizens exercising their rights.”

The RDRR believes that the CE could not have sustained his campaign without the direct support of the Mayor and her power bloc on Council. And that they should join him in the sin bin for tacitly endorsing his threat, as one RDRR member put it, ‘to mug law-abiding citizens with a bag full of coin provided by the ratepayers’. Since repeat bullying has already given us the CBD Cycleway, the health hub and unreasonable rates hikes, and prevented public consultations about the Annual Plan, a Red Card might be appropriate in October.

ends

© Scoop Media