IN reply to Councillor Mary Donnelly’s reply to Betty Brown’s letter in the Cootamundra Herald:

After 20 or 30 years we did expect no increase in what we paid for our burial plot. 

Our funeral, including casket etc, that we paid for at the same time will be of the same value as we chose at the time (July 1994) because the money was invested. We invested in a plot of ground in Cootamundra Lawn Cemetery. 

You invest in land, clothes etc buying and expecting no return on the expenditure. 

If this council had invested our money and other people’s money at the time they received it then it would be there when our lives end. 

On July 8, 2014 we received notification from the council as we are still alive (84 and 85 years old). 

If we go before the end of next financial year someone must pay $3467 less the $1070 we already paid. 

We really do not care about roads, fence repairs, wages and new areas. We also pay rates for that! 

As for the remarks attributed to Mr Trethewey in the Wagga Daily Advertiser “A bit of a storm in a teacup”, we find that offensive, insensitive and inappropriate. 

I am very, very upset. We don’t go away for holidays we can’t afford. We’ve had our same car for 23 years. We live comfortably and keep warm. An investment is an investment and we did not expect the prices to go up, nor were we told they would. 

We are not really keen on telling the town what is meant to be our and our family’s private business but that is what it has come to. 

Joyce and Jeff Hodges 

Phillip Street, Cootamundra