Dear Council, try saying sorry and dump the propaganda

OPINION: Dear Council, Thank you very much for your rates demand, writes Joe Bennett this week.

 I was excited to discover that my annual rates have exceeded $2000 for the first time. Well done.

Along with the invoice you sent me a glossy brochure. It was called "a guide to your rates" all in lower case letters like that, confirming that you are a modern and funky council. Well done again.

It was with eager fingers that I opened the guide and found a letter from you to me. "Dear ratepayer", it began, "keeping rates affordable has been a key driver of this Council".

Well now, I know what a key is and I know what a driver is, but neither piece of knowledge is much use here. The phrase "key driver" is a dead metaphor. More significantly it derives from the world of corporate jargon, which suggests that you think of yourself as a corporation. You are not a corporation. You are a public service. Indeed you are actually my servants. I am paying you to do a job for me. So rather than using the jargon that corporations use to cloud the truth, I'd prefer you to tell me the truth.

I'm afraid I haven't finished with that opening sentence. The verb "keeping" in the phrase "keeping rates affordable" assumes that rates were affordable before. Well they weren't. You admit as much three paragraphs later. "As well as our efforts to keep costs down, many thousands of our residents have successfully applied for a rates rebate."

Now, I'm not going to dwell on the syntax of that sentence which implies, entertainingly, that your efforts have applied for, and received, a rebate. I am merely going to observe that if "many thousands" of people got a rebate last year, the rates weren't, to use your own word, "affordable". And if they weren't affordable in the first place, it's a nonsense to speak of "keeping" them affordable.

Nor is that all. In your second paragraph you acknowledge that many ratepayers "are in difficult financial situations right now". This is a mealy mouthed way of saying that they are poorer than they were last year. And so, you say, "that's why we put such a focus on keeping rate increases to below 4 per cent".

I'm not sure how you can "put a focus" on something, let alone "such a focus", but nevertheless your point is clear. You are boasting that because your customers are poorer than they were a year ago – and many thousands of them were already too poor to pay your bills – you're only going to charge them 4 per cent more. And this is called keeping rates affordable.

I do hope you can see the flaw in the reasoning. If your customers are poorer than they were, and yet you increase the amount you charge them, then the affordability of your rates must, by definition, have declined. Thousands more ratepayers are going to find your bills unaffordable. In other words your key driver didn't drive you at all. And you are trying to make me believe that a 4 per cent increase isn't an increase. You are not being straight with me, dear council. And for $2000 a year I think I deserve a bit of straightness.

I do realise that you perform thankless work. My father worked for councils all his life, and he hated to hear from the public because all they ever did was moan. And I'll admit that I have never sent you a letter thanking you for the reliable water supply, or for providing me with safe and well-lit roads. That's perhaps a failing on my part. But at the same time I have never sent you a glossily printed "guide to my feelings" that was just a semi-literate piece of propaganda designed to conceal the truth.

There is plenty more I could pick up on in your "guide". I particularly enjoyed the "higher budget for the resolution of weather-tight homes claims". Why anyone should make a claim for having a weather-tight home, I can't guess. Unless perhaps it's because you've heard rather too much of the word "leaky" applied to buildings that you inspected and approved.

But all I want to say is please stop trying to deceive me. I am not a customer to be seduced. I am your employer to be respected. And if you really are keen to charge me as little as possible in rates, you could start by sacking your illiterate propagandist, cancelling the printing of glossy brochures, and just stamping the top of your rates demand with the words, "Rates have gone up 4 per cent. Sorry."

Regards, Joe.

» Joe Bennett is an English-born travel writer and columnist who lives in New Zealand with dogs. His columns are syndicated in newspapers throughout New Zealand.

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