A $70,000 app to help Hamilton City Council staff with te reo has one councillor calling for closer scrutiny of “pet projects” as ratepayers face an unprecedented rates rise.
He Pou Koorero – an app “designed to help people on their te reo journey” – will be launched this month and was funded by the city council.
Councillor Geoff Taylor said Hamilton ratepayers were facing a 19.9 per cent rate rise, increasing to 80 per cent over five years and spending on non-core services should be suspended for three years.
He called the app a luxury at a time when ratepayers were in a cost of living crisis and facing the biggest rate increase in two decades.
“Why aren’t you putting the money into offsetting existing costs, instead of creating apps so staff can learn te reo? I just think it’s really cavalier.” […]
The $70,000 cost was part of $525,000 in Better Off Funding focused on embedding Te Tiriti o Waitangi into the council. The figure included:
[…]
Taylor believed it was not just the app that was wasteful council spending.
He suggested freezing transport spending for three years as well as gully planting, cutting the cycling budget, looking at whether City Safe officers were needed, and giving up his own “baby”, an $11m pedestrian and cycle bridge across the Waikato River.
The council should also slash its staff from 1375 to about 1000 and axe three Maangai Maori and two ward councillor seats from the 18-member council, keeping 10 ward councillors and two Maori ward seats, he said.
RNZ
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