Council abdicating its duty on representation

Under the Department of Internal Affairs, every six years local territorial authorities must do a representation review, for example, the Maori seats or if Tokoroa should have a community board to represent the 14,000 people who live here. This storm in a teacup over who signed the petition is more about the council abdicating its duty to run a poll under supervised conditions properly set out so that a community can have its democratic right to a say.

In two years’ time this council must have that representation review and has now shown its own bigoted prejudice in trying to delay it for three years and not spending $1 per person to have a proper poll in the district which will affect the representation of the community.

Ultimately the mayor and the 10 councillors who voted against the poll in a full council meeting should use their signatures to resign if they voted against it, or, fire the chief executive officer and Richard Fisk for misleading the council on the importance of holding a poll that cost $30,000 and represents a significant number of members of this community. R Young Tokoroa South Waikato News that the mayor is looking to remove funding for the Mayoral Scholarship in response to a small number of negative people in the South Waikato. I am a council employee and have worked closely with one of the scholarship recipients and talk frequently with another. Both of these people fully deserved the scholarships they received as I am sure all the scholarship recipients have. R Cathie Tokoroa