Fridays Angry Reflection

31 July 2026

Ecclesiastes 10:20: “Do not curse the king, even in your thought; do not curse the rich, even in your bedroom; for a bird of the air may hear your voice, and a bird in flight may tell the matter”.

Council let you down this week folks, and leadership matters. If nothing else you glean from the happenings this week, take at least that.

Yes its been a rough and tumble few months alright and we are nearly at the end of the road. But Auckland didn’t get a chance to decide their future in 2010 nor the amalgamations of 1989, and a bit of pressure isn’t always a bad thing. August 9th is the deadline for Councils around the country to submit their Head Start proposals to government to consider for a new reset of local government, and Taupo District Council came up with…nothing. Tuesday was decision time (watch the meeting HERE, and for the agenda HERE) and was advertised as a debate but there was to be no debate, because Mayor John Funnell said that at the very outset. My own 10 minute Waikato Together proposal was disallowed to be presented in public view, and only a handful of Taupo District Council councillors had bothered to look at it even though it was submitted last Friday. Instead we were subjected to two hours of the staff presenting their point of view, with the following so-called ‘debate’ introduced by the chairperson Mayors stifling comment of “you get the chance to make one comment only before we go to the vote” for arguably the most important opportunity of this Council for probably 40 years (watch that moment and my own statement immediately following HERE). So at the end we decided to effectively do nothing except send to government a sternly voiced note of disapproval. Because we already run a tight ship much better than the rest, and amalgamating with anybody else would only make us worse. Yeah, right.

Incidentally we also had Mayor Aksel Bech of Waikato District Council and Mayor Mike Pettit of Waipa District Council in the room, who travelled all the way down to answer questions in case they were asked regarding their Roto ki te Moana / Lake to the Ocean proposal which also includes Taupo, South Waikato and Hamilton City (read about that HERE). Theirs is an impressive submission developed along similar lines to Waikato Together, addressing function first before form and including emphasis on local voice with things like strengthened community boards. It also precisely fits the government mandate of designing around the catchment areas, and a Waikato river model would hardly be complete without Taupo. Except it was never tabled or circulated for elected members to properly consider, even though I have just learned our Mayor received it as long ago as 22 July. I talked to Aksel afterwards and he was understandably perplexed, in fact I don’t even think he really believed what he had witnessed – that we had disregarded their proposal without even discussing it. I had to explain to him that yes, that is really what just went down.

Folks there are of course a few other vagaries to all this, and of course I am just giving you my own point of view. But the past few days for me have left me angry simmering that this Council has acted in such a foolish way. It is being now spun as bravery, but nothing could be so farther from the truth. All that Taupo District Council has done the past three months is circle around the problem without coming up with any solution. All that is being defended is the status quo, which by the way also means that staff get to keep their jobs. I can tell you this decision is absolutely not in the districts best interest, because now we are at the whim of the government to decide. But I am not all sad about it, because there is scant chance this Council will escape as a Waikato river catchment unitary clearly won’t be formed without Lake Taupo being included. I believe that will very likely to be made happen since South Waikato recently voted to join the Lake to the Ocean proposal, and that makes the requisite majority of Councils agreeing for it to be eligible to succeed. So we could have been an enthusiastic part of the solution, but will now instead get treated like a recalcitrant teenager being dragged along for the ride.

Although this Council’s behaviour should be seen as a massive failure of leadership, there will still be opportunity to reset the way things operate in a constructive way. But is going to take the adult government stepping in, and hopefully by next election 2028 Taupo District Council will all be swept away. Cos folks let me tell you if we don’t learn soon that is gonna be the case (and they said we would hear in September), I don’t very much feel like sticking around.

Okay apart from all that, what else is going on?

Spinning your wheel: Tuesday we also had a Council meeting where nothing too much earth shattering did go down (you can watch HERE with the agenda HERE). Item 5.4: “Financial Stewardship, Efficiency and continuous Improvement Update” was a politically timely item relating to our non-participation in the Head Start process and reads pretty much exactly as it sounds – a self-congratulatory report on all the things that staff are doing to try and keep a lid on costs, and righteous justification where it can’t (watch from HERE). There was nothing in there about Elected Members getting more direct say in the big financial decisions as they go down, which just highlights the current philosophy at this Council of keeping governance out of so-called ‘operational matters’, when governance is in fact responsible for it all. So in other words it is attempted political explanation rather than offering much of a solution, and it also doesn’t explain why some other Councils have been able to keep rates under the rate of inflation but not us.

How we vote: Item 5.6 at the same meeting brought up the question of whether we want to stick with First Past the Post (FPP) or change to Single Transferrable Vote (STV) for the 2028 election (watch from HERE). Even though I am hoping there won’t be a Taupo District Council left by then, it could potentially be applicable and Elected Members have until mid September to decide. But we won’t be talking to you about it unless you come to us first, because although I reckon we have time to consult the public the Mayor decided not. Anyway in the meantime we have scheduled our Electoral Officer to come for a workshop on 11 August which I presume will be open for public to attend or watch online, so we can all get clued up about the difference because it is not well understood – and there is a mood for change.

Landfill slipperies: Thursday we had the first public open workshop regarding the Taupo landfill consent application going forward (watch HERE). We have had several workshops behind closed doors before on this topic from early in the year, unjustifiably deemed as confidential as per the usual pattern intended to conceal any hints of controversy (wait…didn’t our new Mayor have an election platform of transparency?). Anyway my takeaway is that the only real objections of any substance are cultural and relate to the proximity of nearby Mount Tauhara. If we don’t get the consent renewed to expand the landfill by December 2027 then we will have to truck it out instead, and that’s gonna cost all of us some big bucks every week. The consent process can be time consuming so there is every chance this could happen – so in hindsight we should have started much sooner. I also brought up the solution used overseas as an alternative to landfill: incineration. Taupo resident Richard Hoadley has expressed great interest in this topic for some time and even got a quote from the UK for something less than $5M that could handle our 30,000 annual tonnes. But staff member Brent Aitken backed up by Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor is inferring them as snake-oil salesman, and I am not acquainted enough with the subject to be able to dispute. But I can tell you that I am not the only Councillor not 100% convinced this is not a real alternative, and this is exactly the reason why I think Council should have a set aside fund for Elected Members to use to pay for independent expert advice. If I were the Waikato Regional Council (WRC) reviewer of this consent and knew my stuff, I would be demanding that all practicable options do get presented – but I don’t have too much faith that WRC reviewers will be that. 

Beware of power grabs: Auckland Transport is migrating to become part of Auckland Council later this year, and even though Local Boards were apparently expecting to have some say in the number one city problem of transport, already the powers are at play. As Councillor John Gillon is pointing out here, someone in Auckland Council yesterday decided to redesignate roads all over the place as Arterial thus remain for only regional committees to decide. Being a transport professional from that region I am familiar with a lot of their street network, and I can tell you they have every cause to complain (North Shore shown on left with the new arterials in blue). People, stuff like this always happens in organisational rejigs and it is all to do with power.

Why I don’t use AI Slop: Except for when I do. Here is a wonderful explainer why proper writers won’t use AI, written by one of my favourite blogger authors who I am sure has greatly influenced what I do.

Fridays explainer because its important you know about Susie: