Alexander (Sandy) Milne  

Who agrees with Councillor Lesley Immink, who said in an opinion piece (Beacon, July 18) "Good leadership is about supporting your team's majority decision, and I hope to see demonstration of this whomever the mayor and council might be".

Those surprising words were from our deputy mayor and I predict will come back to bite her in the October local body elections.   Who else could she be pointing the finger at if not our current mayor?

If Mayor Dr Victor Luca had followed his councillors, we would be facing even stiffer rates rises now.  Thank goodness he did what wise and successful leaders do, which is lead with the interests of the funders (us) top of mind.

Dr Luca's position on council staffing levels has been very clear.  Zero new staff. He has been pushing his arguments on affordability for years, and asking for a rigorous treatment of the subject by councillors.  He never got enough support.

He has been against nonsensical projects such as the Civic Centre tart-up (at least $12 million down the plug hole), and the boat harbour fiasco whose inevitable cancellation will still cost ratepayers a fortune, and his insistence on a pause on the Rex Morpeth Park redevelopment plans until after the elections has been a godsend for less-well-off ratepayers.

Dr Luca also voted down the council’s Long-Term Plan when it didn't meet his expectations.

All of this is on the public record.  Most of it has been covered in the Beacon.

On July 4, I convened and attended a meeting with Whakatāne Hospital general manager Jenny Martelli and the lead doctor Philippa Cross, in the mayor’s office.

We wanted to know how Whakatāne residents could help hospital management attract and retain nursing and medical staff in a community where rental accommodation is so over-priced.

Since that meeting, I have been comparing salaries of senior hospital managers and medical/surgical specialists with the salaries of our seven senior council managers and the chief executive.

The managers are paid about $250,000, the same as our top hospital doctors, who took 12 years to get qualified.  These managers are paid twice the salary of a senior hospital nurse manager.

Statistics show that all front-line health workers live with higher rates of work-related infections.

In my opinion council managers are grossly overpaid.  They get company cars, and neither they nor badly-performing councillors face sanctions for their frequent bad decisions – the tidal pool at the head, civic centre tart up and proposed boat harbour on a toxic waste dump site.

Lots for us to ponder before the election.