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