Alexander (Sandy) Milne

I respond to the attacks on myself and Mayor Victor Luca by J Beattie in the Beacon on January 15.

I suspect that Mr Beattie was having a Rip van Winkle moment when he composed that diatribe. Where has he been for the past five years?

Mr Beattie accuses me of discussing my letters with Dr Luca before going public in the Beacon with my criticism of councillors.  

Council records show that I did the same with almost every mayor since I arrived in Whakatāne 58 years ago, beginning with Rex Morpeth, who really was a mayor for our times in the 1970s, just as Dr Luca is now.

I was an admirer of and friendly with Jack Gow (1980-1986), Bob Byrne (1986-1989), Lorraine Brill, (1989-1992), Don Herdman (1992-1995), Tony Bonne (1995-1998), Colin Hammond (1998-2004), Colin Holmes (2004-2010), Tony Bonne (2010-2019), and Judy Turner (2019-2022).  

I had little cause to criticise councillors in the distant past. Most of them seemed conscious of the need to control their spending of our rates dollars.  

Most of our current veteran councillors seem to have lost consciousness, beginning about eight years ago, before Dr Luca became a councillor.  

I have been appalled at their handling of several local issues, beginning with their refusal to take free and provably correct advice, re: The Heads kiddies’ pool from engineer Alasdair Abernethy and myself, a former Whakatāne Hospital microbiologist.  

Their tardiness resulted in a total wasted cost approaching one million dollars.  

That was followed by the pink palace con job where councillors spent $10 million more than justified by earthquake risks etc.  

Then we had the 60-berth marina in one of the worst sites possible.

For me, one of the last straws was the plan to spend over $400,000 on loos and drinks stations for strolling shoppers at Mitchell Park.  

We mustn’t forget the other extravagances of our current councillors, including a plan to employ another 32 staff, and get us ratepayers to cough up $60 million for non-urgent work in Matatā.  

There appears to be no ending in sight for their overspending, most of which the mayor has publicly opposed.

Regarding Mr Beattie’s grizzles, I invite Beacon readers to get up to speed on this by doing a simple search for Whakatāne District Council; Extraordinary meeting December 19 2024.  

Avoid the mundane matters by scrolling through the video to 1 hour 10 minutes and hear how councillors treated our mayor.  

Do your own thinking from then on.  Do you agree with me or Mr Beattie?

Our mayor was, in my view, making an eminently sensible announcement that he planned to accept the free advice of wiser retired residents who are still alert, and thus save ratepayers megabucks.

Beacon readers really ought to see how Dr Luca’s initiative on our behalf was treated by too many councillors.

For the record, I am not a member of the Whakatāne Action Group (WAG), but I agree with most of their public statements. We need them.