Guy Burns, Deputy Chair of the Raumati Paraparaumu Community Board is shocked to hear Council is considering subsidising an airline that is looking at operating out of Paraparaumu.
“Recent reports in the media and comments by the Mayor have me concerned that Council is once again considering using ratepayers money to subsidise a private business.
“History has shown the folly of local government meddling in activities they have no expertise or mandate to. As recently as 2012, KCDC lost over one million dollars of Kapiti people’s money in a failed investment with Clean Tech Park in Otaki.
“Council must stick to providing core services to ratepayers; the best way they can support any business is to reduce red-tape and cumbersome compliance requirements.”
After five solid years of my lobbying, councilors will hopefully sign off on a targeted business rate in this LTP. This is the first time ever that residents have not had to foot the entire cost of economic development initiatives in Kapiti.
They will have their own guaranteed budget to use as fit for purposes like the one proposed, to enhance business activity in Kapiti.
This is one of a small handful of LTP decisions I will support. Funds could also be accessed through regional budgets,
Lets be clear, residents are not being asked to fund this and I totally agree the Cleantech Agreement of 2011/2012 wasted an incredible amount of money, over 1 million with no guarantee. In fact the promised guarantee, over the title of the Cleantech Tower building was never signed. We should publicly own that building today.
I went to a considerable amount of personal risk to expose the full extent of this failure on your behalf, an experience I am never likely to forget.
I’ll go along with Guy on this occasion. Let this through and who knows, we could be throwing our hard borrowed money at Airlines next.
Surely number one is to stop spending and get the debt down, and keep it down