Jokes about Hamilton aside, this kind of sucks.
As someone who lives here it’s sad to see and I’ll get to pay for it through rates rises too!
Jesus, that’s pretty dire all right. Just astonishing the council allowed things to get this bad though.
I think it is a case of decades of a lack of investment and development, combined with the covid hit and international pressures.
We have fallen soo far behind as a country. Auckland took a massive hit to council services a year or so ago, wellington canceling a large number of projects… nothing from Christchurch or Dunedin yet.
The sad thing is there are a lot of nice projects that are going to get cut that were shaping up to make quality of life here better.
I would honestly rather have a big rates rise than cut everything back to nothing, as my kids get the benefit growing up here. I’m already paying more in my combined Hamilton + Waikato rates than my relatives in Auckland anyway.
I think this is the sad reality much of my generation is facing. Things aren’t going to get better for us, but we can make it better for the next generation. One less fire to deal with, a bit better infrastructure, better chances to by a house… at the cost of our own limited opportunities.
I don’t see Canada, US, Aussie, UK etc doing much better judging from the news.
