Page 6 - Rob Pascoe News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Christel Yardley/Stuff Traffic heads north along the Cambridge Section of the Waikato Expressway towards Hamilton. Vehicles are regularly bumper-to-bumper during peak hour. A call to slap a tax on residents travelling to other parts of the country for work or play is raising the hackles of provincial leaders. Hamilton has floated the idea of imposing an amenity levy on its satellite towns as it looks for new ways to fund the city’s upkeep. But any notion of a border tax being imposed on Aucklanders flooding into the Coromandel each summer has been quickly shot down by the peninsula’s ma...

Hamilton City Councillor Rob Pascoe heads the councils finance committee. Where there were rates owing from past financial years, and the council was unable to secure a payment arrangement, staff contacted the mortgagee and requested payment. Should there be no mortgage, the council said it could commence legal action. Hamilton City Council Finance Committee Chairman Rob Pascoe said by law, unpaid rates could be added as a debt to a property and could be recovered when the property was sold. If a council took more than six years to recover a debt it became “statute barred” which meant...

City bosses hope paid parking on the edge of the CBD could raise $1.6 million a year. The days of free parking on the CBD’s fringe look numbered as Hamilton politicians hunt for new ways to boost the council’s coffers. A proposal to introduce paid commuter parking on the outskirts of the central city could force hundreds of city workers to rethink their daily commutes and is already attracting some heavyweight political support. City bosses hope the proposal, which is included in the council’s draft long-term plan, will raise $1.6 million in revenue a year and is part of wider moves t...

End-of-year staff functions are a little different this year, says Hamilton City Council Chief Executive Richard Briggs. Slicing up the budget ensured the council’s 1200 staff still had a chance to hold some kind of event. However, the money allocated could not be used to purchase alcohol, with staff having to buy their own if they wanted a tipple. The $20,000 budget was near the $22,323 cost of the council’s 2019 Christmas event, although Briggs pointed out that partners of staff had to pay for themselves, which meant the net cost was nearer $18,600. The 2019 event was held at C...