Memo to WCC; We don’t trust you and we think your Pre-election Report was ghostwritten by Pollyanna on P

Dear WCC, Wellington here, we’ve just read your Pre-election report and reckon that you might have been smoking something when you wrote it. So we thought we’d point out some of the highlights that you missed.

In case you’d forgotten, Civic Square is basically stuffed and we think it’ll cost the better part of a billion bucks to fix that up. It’s a bit rough being on the waiting list for heart surgery, because that’s what we need, especially when there doesn’t appear to be any date for a fix. Shoving out any contentious decisions until after the election seems a little disingenuous we might add.

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but like our heart, which is broken, our arteries are completely clogged as well. We I think it’s a bloody disgrace that you’re not planning on fixing that until some time in the next two decades via a marketing campaign otherwise known as LGWM, we could be well and truly dead by then. In fact, default decision making seems to shove everything out as far as possible.

I see your CEO is missing sleep at night, strange, given the salary he’s on, I’d be sleeping like a baby. We’re losing sleep over where we are going to find the extra 22% increase in rates over the next five years and how long it is before we get the sack because public transport means we are consistently late for work.

Out in the burbs’ we can assure you that the economy has not been growing for the majority of us, aside from tradies, who are incidentally losing money hand over fist because of congestion, most of us haven’t seen a pay rise in ten years. The working poor are leaving the city in droves for the regions and with Housing New Zealand still knocking down and selling houses, getting families to move in is tough. Who could afford to buy anyway?

We see you picked all the best measures from spurious surveys and overseas multi-national banks ratings to pretty up your report while leaving out previous pre-election measures that no doubt show a bit of mud on your face.

We’d don’t think you’ve tackled the big issues all that well at all. We know their are many buildings throughout our city that are in desperate need of repair and nearly every week sees another shut. Apartment dwellers are at their wit’s end and ready to nail the doors shut and leave it to the bank to sort out.

We see you are still eyeing up vanity projects. While telling us that you need to get the basics right you want to spend more and more money on things like a Convention Centre and Airport Extension that frankly are white elephants and a huge cost to an already overburdened rate base. It’s just as well you are so disorganised you can’t actually get any of them off the ground.

Worst of all is the fact that more than half the city doesn’t trust you and you still don’t get it.

You reckon you’ve worked hard on engagement over the last three years and we reckon you’re full of it. If you want a benchmark, go and check out the Shelly Bay mess. Worse, you don’t recognise you are at fault because you spend a lot of paper trying to justify and weasel your way out of the terrible trust level you have with us rather than taking it on the chin and fixing it.

Arts Capital we might be, unless you visit Courtenay Place on a Friday night, or any night down that end of the week, when you see the real side of Wellington exposed under new LED streetlights.

By the way, LED’s aren’t the answer to a climate emergency, which you declared weeks ago and have done three parts of f£$% all about. Just a quick note, not only are sea-levels rising, the city is actually sinking, just nature getting the boot in. A plan would be good.

Frankly, you’re like the fella who’s been sitting on his couch the last three years, ordering in pies on Uber eats, watching unrealistic documentaries, and buying unnecessary crap from the shopping channel. You’re big, you’re heavy, you’re slow, and you’re in danger of a heart attack. You can’t even bend over anymore to tie your shoes up.

But you still have the rosey glasses on, still think everything is ok, still reckon you’re the man, and forget that it’s time you turned over control to some young trainers, got off the couch, and remembered why you signed up for this gig.

Until then, Wellington is stagnating if not going backwards, and in an expensive way.

Yours, Wellington

PS We deserve better and we know you can be, because you were once.

PPS Love you.