The Labour Government's decision to put Commissioners into the Tauranga City Council has caused a lot of hardship for many homeowners and people who rent because of the Government allowing the Commissioners to force upon us a larger rate increases, which people cannot afford. This is causing problems for shops and businesses and people do not have enough money to buy from them. The increases of mortgage payments, rates increases and increases of power, insurances, phone lines, petrol and transported goods, rents, have now had a serious effect of people not having enough money to spend.

The Commissioners have no understanding of how that effects people. Their plan for a museum in the Tauranga civic precinct will be a waste of money as tourists will not drive there unless the museum is on a tourist main road with free parking. The Gisborne and Opotiki museums are on tourist main roads with free parking and close to shops. Mount Maunganui should have a museum and a three-storey carpark as thousands of tourists go there. Abridged.

H.R. Burrows, Papamoa.