Don't claw the cats
The Dunedin Mayor’s pitch to local councils in his campaign to be elected the new president of Local Government New Zealand is nuts.
Despite the vast majority of ratepayers considering the move silly, Dave Cull wants to use ratepayers’ money to lobby the government to force cat owners to register their cats.
The proposal would also see annual cat fees, cat curfews and even cat rangers to patrol the streets looking for cats off their designated property, or breaching curfew hours (yes really!).
This is the ultimate in the local government trying to find expensive solutions to a problem that doesn’t exist.
Earlier in the month, LGNZ released its latest performance survey showing record low levels of confidence in the decision making of local government. With the so-called ‘leaders’ of the sector too busy talking about cat rangers to focus on New Zealand’s enormous infrastructure deficit, no wonder local government is in crisis.