by Christopher Ruthe

Dear Kathy, 

I voted for you because of your clear unequivocal and written statement that you would not support the Gateway. You and 3 other elected councillors repeated that promise on the campaign trail. You got the votes, such as mine because of that commitment. Your action reinforces the views of those who have lost faith in the integrity of the democratic process. They will say the moment a representative councillor gets their hands on the steering wheel of power they throw contempt in the faces of the fools stupid enough to believe their election commitments and proceed to do the opposite of that election commitment.

This ultimately undermines our democratic system, and moves us to autocracy. Then the Government wonders why voters do not vote

This is a resigning matter, but I have no expectation of it.

Here are your words:

Your precise words written there are:  “I have already posted if elected
as a Councillor I will NOT be voting for or supporting the Gateway.” (The emphasis is your own).

The seeking of yet another report seems to amount to a clever cynical ploy by the councillors who reneged on their promises to the voters. You will now say that you didn’t know enough to vote. Yet you pretended to know the issues, sufficient to express your opposition.  If all councillors wanting a new report because of ignorance — why did you not tell us that while seeking our votes. That would have given us the chance to vote for those who were not ignorant.

The report will be a whitewash by staff who vehemently support for the project. Previous staff reports have resulted in reprimands from the Auditor General on this very project with the distortion of data and manipulation of facts. Will councillors who won on misrepresentations use a whitewashed report to cleanse the sins against their electors and continue to hold  hands on the levers of power?

The staff are not the voters. They did not steal my vote . You know that Councillor Randall, whom you replaced was a firm opponent of the project. You managed to get his supporters to switch increasing your chance of victory at the polls. Note that Paraparaumu has been firmly against this particular building from the outset with surveys showing 70% opposition.

Please urgently explain. An excuse that you did not know enough will not be good enough. There are dozens of reports publicly available that the supporters of the motion should have read. But in the end this is a very simple matter: should KCDC proceed with a project (1) opposed by the vast majority of residents; (2) where 8 candidates promised to oppose it; (3) where the promise of Mayors Gurunathan and Holborrow that it will cost the ratepayer only 2 million dollars and will be self-funding are patently incorrect; (4) is illegal because it is against the Reserves Act that protects the existing natural environment.

I respectfully suggest that you revert to your promise and vote the project down. Or resign [it is a claim of the Labour Party that accountability and transparency are among its foundation principles] so we can have a by-election so your electors have a chance of having a councillor that represents them and will vote on a critical Kapiti issue as a true representative of the people.

As an aside, I find it interesting that a Labour dominated council knowing the request of the Governor of the Reserve bank, (just last month, when raising interest rates), for everyone to show restraint on spending on non-necessities so inflation can be lowered with a minimum loss of jobs, the Labour elite in KCDC are willing to maximise the financial harm to the New Zealanders at the bottom of the rung so what some may see as their grandiose dreams can be fulfilled.

C.B. Ruthe