Alexander (Sandy) Milne

I refer to the headline on page 5 of the June 18 Beacon, “Recreation hub plans advanced”, which is surely misleading?

I read nothing new in that cheerleading hype from Alexandra Pickles, our council’s general manager community experience, and I sincerely hope that there has been no advance in plans for the hundred-million-dollar Rex Morpeth Park complex.

Future spending of our rates dollars is sure to be a serious topic in the lead up to the October election.

Perhaps every ratepayer (that includes tenants) could be given the option of voting for or against big spends on election day.  

Could differential rating be introduced? (user pays?).

I suggest that the Rex Morpeth Park megabucks would be better spent on building townhouses on the vacant land on the corner of King and Stewart streets for low cost rental by much needed doctors and nurses.

I have a rental property, and I have been doing just that for hospital nurses for 11 years.

When I arrived in Whakatāne, the hospital board provided us with inexpensive accommodation until we could build a home of our own.

Nowadays, rent takes up half of a worker’s take-home pay whilst fat cats get fatter. A state-of-the-art GP hub and new community clinical laboratory for the Eastern Bay could be built on the same corner, giving us a model health centre which we all owned and which could really attract staff.

Opportunistic for-profit providers should be excluded.