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Bev Butler
The number of Dunedin ratepayers that have heeded the
call to delay their rates payments in a protest against the
Forsyth Barr Stadium project has risen to 104.
Stop the Stadium announced the strategy in January, when
president Bev Butler said ratepayers would be urged to delay
rate payments if the council decided to go ahead with the
project.
A pamphlet distributed at the group's March 29 meeting at the
Town Hall said the strategy was a no-risk, low-cost means of
protesting to the council, and former mayor Sukhi Turner
urged people attending to withhold the average rate increase
of $66 a year to make the council take notice.
People were encouraged to deduct $16.50 each quarter, which
would attract a 10% annual penalty of $6.60.
By February, about 40 people had withheld rates.
Asked yesterday for an update, council senior financial
accountant David Yates said 104 people had cancelled their
direct debits, with the stadium given as the reason.
The 10% penalty is applied immediately to the portion of a
rates demand which remains unpaid, and if ratepayers are
still in arrears at the end of the financial year, June 30,
they receive a notice of impending action to recover the
unpaid amount.
There are more than 53,000 rated Dunedin properties, nearly
49,000 of them residential.
Pay for the rugby stadium or lose your house
When you are threatened by the DCC that they will take your house if you don't pay rates, then it's understandable that people won't do this. However it would be very stupid to assume that that means 99.92% of Dunedin people are behind the stadium. Using such flawed logic, one could say that there is only one person in Dunedin who supports the stadium because the CST only received a single $30 donation in more than two years. Is this person the infamous "silent majority"?
Even the biased "men only" DCC survey had over 50% of respondents against ratepayer funding of the stadium. (with other surveys up to 80% against) And that was taken before we were told rates are going up by 40% in four years - an average $593 per house more per year. And they say only $66 of our nearly $600 increase is for the stadium (yeah, right) but they cannot explain where the rest of the $10+m per year is coming from. Get your wallets out. If you've got a $250,000 house, in four years time you'll be paying more than a $500,000 house currently pays (unless record low interest rates on our $100m loan don't remain at record lows for the next 20 years, then it will be much more).
104 only?
What happened to the 78% that we keep getting quoted to us? This is laughable and just proves how this vocal minority has even fooled themselves.
Early days...
Most people are rather conservative and don't want to take on authority. The fact that there are any ratepayers not paying at this early stage should be a clear signal to council that they have stuffed things up either in their communication on what the project is about or that they just haven't listened to the people that don't want it.
As for this rubbish about "silent majority or minority" whichever way it's looked at, what does that really mean?
About 78% of people are against public funding for the fiasco, sorry "multipurpose stadium" according to one survey.
That doesn't mean that 78% of ratepayers will automatically stop paying a part of their rates; to think that would happen would be nuts.
Personally, I prefer the smoko room debate as a gauge and where I work it is pretty close to 60% of those that care not wanting the thing. The others want it and will pay because they do for the museum, art gallery etc. Nice way to justify a project...
The fear of loosing one's house or facing even further penalties on top of the penalty of having to pay for this stupid waste of money in the first place is enough to put most people off not paying.
My guess is that most people won't get really upset about paying for this project until the charges start getting itemised on their rates bill so they can see their contribution, that is when people might get a bit militant.
I've not known any project have so much opposition to have a special interest group setup and private legal action and a huge amount of submissions against it.