Letters to the editor

The kidnap attempt was undertaken showing no regard for the physical or emotional safety of the children or their grandmother.  I am amazed they were able to  get away with breaking the laws of another country.  You would hope it couldn't happen in our country.  

It's time for the producers of 60 Minutes and Channel Nine’s other magazine type program Current Affair to start acting professionally rather than making value judgments and harassing the subjects of their stories.  I thought it was the role of the media to report news and current affairs not paid someone to create it.

The Gash controlled Shoalhaven City Council is planning a shocking deficit budget of up to $3 million and with all the sweeteners for the big end of town one could describe it as an election budget. Previous councils never planned for deficit budgets of more than maybe $100,000. A deficit budget can be likened to a shop assistant earning $35 000 per year but planning to spend $40 000. What will happen if during the deficit period this council is faced with an emergency? A small bushfire, or a flood, that doesn’t attract disaster funding but damages or destroys infrastructure. How will additional revenue be raised with such a huge deficit in the budget? 

Only last year Council proposed a reduction in Nowra CBD business rates, which are to be subsequently paid for by all ratepayers this year. The community at large strongly objected to the CBD business rate reductions. Now in 2016 the pensioners and mum and dad ratepayers are being told to pay, but this time it is an extra $20 on average annually to subsidise commercial property owners. 

It should also be noted that rates to a business is an expense and can be claimed off the taxable income. So businesses only pay half and in many cases the rates are charged back to tenants but what is the likelihood of a saving being passed on? You guessed it, nil. To talk of decreasing tax to property investors and to pay for the decrease by increasing rates to ordinary ratepayers without offering proportionate increases in infrastructure and services is unjust, inequitable, discriminatory and fundamentally wrong. To ask pensioners, those on limited incomes and struggling families to pay for a business rates decrease is unconscionable.

Council justifies these increases by claiming it has been constrained by rate pegging, increased expenses for building materials, electricity, street lighting, insurance and roads expenditure. All residents are constrained by the same increased expenses but they don’t have the ability to raise revenue by the stroke of a pen.

I originally voted to support the draft budget going on exhibition thinking it would be balanced before its final adoption or at least pared back to something more reasonable. As it stands I am unable to support the budget in its current form. 

We have a very big problem in Ulladulla. I have nearly been killed by stupid drivers. Drivers do not put their indicating lights on. 

I've walked for 60 years around this area and never have I seen so many drivers not doing the right thing. 

I wish cameras were installed at the corner of McDonald’s and the NRMA. Some drivers have not put their indicators on until they are in the next street. I’m not a mind reader, so I don't know what their intentions are. Something has to be done.