Palmerston North is often advertised as "a great place to raise kids". Unless you're a city councillor:
Palmerston North's city council has thrown out the idea of paying councillors' childcare costs, for now.
The Remuneration Authority this year approved the concept of allowing elected representatives to claim up to $6000 a year for a child's care while a parent was on council business.
But it left it up to individual councils to decide whether to adopt a policy.
Despite a spirited plea from the council's youngest councillor, mother-of-two Aleisha Rutherford, the proposal failed at Monday's full council meeting.
There's a long list of comments from councillors, which are worth reading just to see how backwards and unrepresentative Palmerston North's local "representatives" are. Rachel Bowen, Vaughan Dennison, Lew Findlay, Bruno Petrenas, Lorna Johnson, Karen Naylor, and Grant Smith voted against, and as a result I will not be giving any of them a preference next month. I am not interested in voting for sexist gerontocrats who support barriers to the participation of parents or potential parents in local government.
