City Hall

"There are some people formed with feelings so blunt, that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of their lives." Edmond Burke

It has been drawn to my attention that "City Hall" is a bigger villain than central government. In New Zealand every tin-pot little town has a council with an elected mayor and councillors drawn from the local community. Generally speaking, these people are not the chief villains. The council employees cause most of the damage. They believe that rules are rules and must be obeyed without question and substantial penalties extracted from the unwilling ratepayer (taxpayer) by a process commonly known as theft. However, the mere fact that council have the ability to make the laws to suit themselves, doesn't make the penalties honest. Theft is still theft, no matter how you look at it. If the citizen were to thieve something from the council, he would receive his day in court. But when council thieves from the citizen, that's the mindless bureaucrat doing his job. It would be prudent to remember that if 10% of Adolf Hitler's bureaucracy had refused his demands, World War 2 would never have happened.

I have been a ratepayer in the NZ City of Upper Hutt for thirty years. During this period I
have paid approximately three times the original cost of my home to City Hall to look after my interests. As it happens, City Hall couldn't give a damn about my interests. Their sole preoccupation is living in their closed little world of self gratification. In other words, their paychecks are more important that the ratepayer.

Somewhere along the line City Hall's data base failed and I didn't receive my dog licence renewal notice. In due course the $53 licence turned into $353 despite my written suggestion that if they had sent the bill, everything would have been fine. When all else failed, the bureaucrats could have easily picked up the telephone. This seems logical in a city of about 36,000 people. The council employees then held a hearing from which I was excluded and decided the penalty would stand. Obviously, money was more important than honesty. I contacted the mayor who specialises in dishing out pot plants to citizens on their hundredth birthday. Much talk about how City Hall operated and how it takes forever for the system to operate efficiently but naturally nothing was his fault and he could do nothing.

I had my day in court and was completely disgusted that truth was ignored and the system was all that mattered. It was a case of one authority backing another authority. How dare a mere commoner tell them that their system was corrupt? Guilty as charged. The court officials knew they were wrong and their red faces and hurried exits demonstrated their guilt.

Now I find that City Hall has compulsorily purchased some Main Street building and on-sold them to a developer who specialised in building unattractive slab sided concrete buildings. Apparently City Hall created a law allowing them to do whatever they wanted. Considering Upper Hutt's population is dropping, what was wrong with the existing shop keepers? Or was it a case of more revenue for City Hall?

Another City Hall idea was to build a huge swimming pool complex. The Chamber of
Commerce pointed out that income was about half of the real cost and that the majority of ratepayers would never benefit from the facility. City Hall jumped up and down and
suggested that out of town visitors would cover the extra by spending money in the new
CBD. Visitors have their own CBD and swimming pools, so why would they bother with
Upper Hutt?

My suggestion for City Halls worldwide is as follows. Progress for the sake of progress is fantasy and will only increase the cost to the ratepayers. Use softly softy, catchee monkey for rebuilding worn out facilities. In a situation like my dog licence fiasco, rather than charge madly ahead and hound the honest citizen, sit back and appraise the matter logically. Consider the ramifications of penalising the citizen for your own system failures. Think about who will benefit and just who will be treated with contempt. Forget the law, pick up the phone and nine times out of ten all will be well. Above all, realise that City Hall is not the real world and its sole function is to provide the basic infrastructure for the benefit the citizen. Blindly following arrogant rules is to your own disadvantage. You depend upon the ratepayer funding your income: the ratepayer doesn't live off your back.

Remember Adolf Hitler. To abuse power is to invite oneself to open-ended retribution. At the end of World War 2, there were no dogs left in Europe (food was food) and most CBDs were destroyed. Perhaps this was an example of bureaucracy cutting its own throat?