Your view: airport, youth report, national standards, rates

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Don't make excuses: be accountable
The  remarks by both the airport manager and Mayor Tim (Southland Times, February 6) show the scant regard they have for the investment of the public of Invercargill into the airport runway extension.

The investors (ie, the public) were told that the airport extension would bring international flights and, to date, that promise has been shown to be incorrect.

The manager now says it doesn't matter because a couple of international flights a week would have no impact on the running of the airport anyway.

Hello.

Mayor Tim says it has been good because flights can divert from Queenstown.

Hello, again.

Those same diverted jets were using Invercargill Airport long before the extension was thought up. That excuse is political spin at its worst.

The public deserves a bit of honesty and accountability. Millions of dollars have been spent by people who have assured the poor old public it was needed. To date it has been proved not to be the case and those who were part of the process need to put their hands up and accept responsibility.

It's not good enough to continue to expect the public to gaze skywards in some forlorn hope that a plane may one day appear.

The one constant from the council's various forays into business we seem to have to resign ourselves to is that, again this year, our rates will increase at a much greater percentage than inflation.

Many reasons will be rolled out but the simple fact is, when someone spends money it has to come from somewhere.

What's even more galling is that, after the millions of ratepayers' funds spent on someone's dream, you can't even get a park outside for a few minutes to pick someone up without getting chased along by airport parking staff. If the airport manager thinks it's OK to have a multimillion-dollar investment doing nothing useful, surely he could see his way to a less penny-pinching attitude towards the users of the airport.
Philip Todd, Invercargill

There is good news
It is unfortunate that The Southland Times chose to sensationalise the findings of the Western Southland Youth Needs Analysis (news, February 5) instead of reporting the good news.

And the good news is that there is very little difference in relation to problems with Western Southland and the rest of New Zealand, except that people in rural areas (almost universally) suffer due to a lack of services. This does not mean that these issues should be addressed.

Young people in Western Southland are very supportive of each other in magnificent ways, they contributed to the study with enthusiasm and intelligence, they want to be part of the decisions that affect them, they want to be accepted by adults, they want a strength-based rather than a weakness-based approach to dealing with issues, and they want to be involved in their community.

Mostly, the young people who participated in the study did so with hope.

Your approach to reporting the study may well have done much to dash their hope by portraying them as a problem rather than the glorious future of New Zealand that they are.
Stewart Hase, consultant psychologist, Invercargill

Standards training costs
I am really concerned that in order to implement the national standards at Tapanui School, my board of trustees is being asked to fund the attendance of support leaders (principal and curriculum leaders) at a one-day workshop.

This means that for two of us to attend our nearest workshop in Gore, the total cost for registration, travel and relief teachers to replace us would be $845.68.

There was no indication at the end of 2009, when the national standards arrived in our schools, that there would be a cost for training. Our school budget, which is already stretched because the operations grant funding has not been increased sufficiently to meet all our basic payments, is now being asked to somehow find funding for this professional development.

Since the revised school curriculum was received by schools at the end of 2007 there has been a two-year process with professional development budgeted by the Government, and our school community was fully involved in reviewing our school vision and values and setting goals for each of the curriculum areas.

We are really looking forward to implementing the curriculum this year, but have real reservations about the imposed national standards and how they will impact on delivery of the new curriculum.

Our 5-year-olds come in with a variety of different experiences and learning needs and to label some of them as failures because they have not reached a required level by the age of six does not sit well with me, either as a principal or as a grandparent of two 4-year-olds who will be starting school during 2010 in different parts of New Zealand.

Surely, if it is good enough to allow the kura kaupapa schools to trial the national standards, the same principle should be applied to our mainstream schools.

If national standards are so important, then a trial period makes a great deal of sense, and funding professional development should be the responsibility of the Government and not boards of trustees.
Anne Gover, principal, Tapanui School

Vote against rates rise
The Invercargill City Council's long-term plan 2009-19 projects a rate rise of 9.03 per cent for the 2010-11 year.

It also states the plan is based on a Southland-wide waste collection system for the whole region, commencing in 2010-11. This collection system, despite the urgency to sign off contracts, has yet to be accepted by the Southland and Gore district councils.

At this stage we do not know whether that 9.03 per cent increase includes the additional $100 for the third bin, or not. If it does, then by rejecting this three-bin concept we would be providing the councillors with some leverage to reduce this 9.03 per cent increase.

If the 9.03 per cent increase does not include that $100 additional solid waste charge (and how could it), then supporting the three-bin proposal would be to vote for an additional increase to the projected rise in rates, and who would want to do that?

Rarely do ratepayers get such an early opportunity to influence the rate-setting process. We should make the most of it by rejecting this compulsory third wheelie bin.
Alan Swallow, Invercargill

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