Firstly, congratulations to Kevin Fearon and his group for this initiative of outlining the issues of this election and providing coverage of that. It's a great example of democracy at work.

It's good to see that Amalgamation is on the radar and that we can see a brief summary of people's views.

I find it curious that "most respondents agree that amalgamation of the three councils could be advantageous" and yet have concerns about appreciable cost benefits to ratepayers.

Wouldn't you first want to know that there were definitely going to be appreciable cost (or other clearly stated tangible) benefits before assuming that amalgamation could be advantageous?

"Apprehension about burgeoning costs" - well, that's reality isn't it? How many public projects come in on time and on budget? The devil is always in the details and as things emerge people often find that the original assumptions were flawed and then backtracking is required.

These things happen and are well recognised - so in my view there had better be very clear and appreciable gains to be made from amalgamation before setting off down this path.

Where we are now is this:

• certain expenditure, certain loss of assets, certain loss of democracy
• uncertain benefits, uncertain costs of implementation