Fridays Open Your Eyes

9 October 2026

Ecclesiastes 3:7 reads pretty much how I view my approach at Council: “A time to tear, And a time to sew; A time to keep silence, And a time to speak…”

Hi folks it is that time of the week again, and this post on Council is on the shorter side. We had the Long Term Plan (LTP) workshops pressing on, which I mostly haven’t bothered to attend since my last Tuesday experience which told me they aren’t being chaired to allow what I would call proper scrutiny of the staff led direction forward. However the yesterday Water Services I decided to turn up, and have used AI to produce some very helpful timestamped summaries for you to hone in on the things you might be interested in (links given below). What an amazing tool is this AI now at our fingertip disposal, so I suppose we will just have to get used to having more of those data centre thingies popping up around the place.

But the sour taste still remains – it is all very well to once every three years come up with a future plan, but locking it in as this Council does with few worthwhile check-ins to Elected Members in the interim is just not on. I think of my former experience at Waitakere City as an engineer, and can only imagine what the former members of Henderson Community Board would think of all this – they functioned very much like the empowered local boards would under my Waikato Together amalgamation concept, and I regularly had to present my projects for their approval which got turned down more than just a couple of times (and present all throughout the year one by one and properly, not just rattling through them all at once). I can tell you one thing – back then if I had suggested we run things like here in Taupo, I would have been laughed out of Henderson Chambers! The horse has indeed been ahead of the cart so long, there’s nobody around to pick up let alone see the dung behind – oh that’s right, its you.

Okay lets rattle them off shall we?

Roads, Reserves and playgrounds galore: Tuesday was part 3 of the LTP series, a 5 hr marathon which you certainly don’t have to watch if you don’t want (but if you do then watch HERE). As promised, here is my AI timestamped meeting 7-page summary. The theme was basically for Elected Members to indicate ‘Include‘, ‘Maybe‘ or ‘Exclude‘ projects on the basis of presented merits, but I can tell you the provided information was very skimpy indeed. I have requested pdf copies of what we get to hopefully share with you next week, but in the meantime below is a snippeted example of a project which I previously estimated could be done for several-fold less expense (the Chemist Warehouse intersection in town at an estimated $970K – which present Elected Members nominated to ‘include‘). Three million in todays dollars is roughly what I used to have allocated for minor safety improvements at Waitakere City pop. 200K, and I think there is no way we should be expending anywhere near much on fairly trivial intersections as these.

Water, water everywhere but soon enough not to drink: Yesterday we had the Water Services workshop for LTP capital projects which I did decide to attend, another 4 hr epic (watch HERE) but with a much more palatable AI timestamped 9-page summary you can read HERE. There were a bunch of items covered in water, wastewater & stormwater, and basically the format here was a staff presentation of the ‘musts‘ and ‘shoulds‘, although perhaps because we had a different chairperson there was no move to voting whether to ‘include‘. By the way if you hadn’t worked it out by now, water services are not currently proposed to be rate capped like the rest, and this is a serious shortcoming I feel. Clearly it is subjective opinion whether we really need to do many of the projects presented before us as ‘musts‘, and the necessity for some of them are dependent on extraordinary events such as an earthquake or lake algae bloom. My own view is that because Taupo is a relatively new town and we don’t have falling apart infrastructure like some, there really is no excuse we should be spending more than the inflation which ratepayers can afford. In my opinion it is just that simple, and we should be sticking to the 2-4% mandated by government as per the rest of Council expenditure. Hear me again: no excuse. But I am certainly in the very small minority of Chambers who am thinking along these lines, and on stating this yesterday received no accolades just a few sniggers. Shall I say it?…Ugh.

That’s enough of that, so what else do we have going on?

Why can’t we do that? Waikato District Council managed to end with a $26.7M operating surplus for 2025/26 which you can read about HERE. They also managed a 3.79% rates increase in that period, so it sounds as if they are certainly on the right track and could be a good partner to amalgamate with. I wonder what the government will next year decide for us?

Google better than signs: There was apparently some tensions near Turangi last week with the NZTA road closure of SH1 Waiotaka No.2 Bridge for several days, and all because some people chose to take the detour route of Waiotaka Road instead of driving all around the other side of the lake. But Waiotaka Road includes a small ford not exactly suitable unless you have a 4WD, so perhaps next time NZTA had better talk to Google because nowadays people drive by their phones and don’t necessarily see the warning signs.

Modus operandi common thread: The Ombudsman is apparently looking into allegations of secrecy in the Education Ministry which you can read about HERE, basically alleging bully tactics of management to public servants to not write things down. In my experience this absolutely applies to Councils too, and especially the one I talk about most.

Napier Highway $1M windfall: Recall a few months ago that I posted about the $1M job which Taupo District Council recently finished building? Those interested can read this consultant report which I subsequently LGOIMAed. Now it is clear that some thought did go into this with a few options explored – but I simply disagree the way things like this get handled. This was a $1M job left entirely to engineering judgement, and although it is of course too late now I would have preferred the much cheaper pictured option been taken more seriously. Yes the bank is failing and yes we seem to have made that problem go away, but I can think of better ways to spend $1M and buying time by moving the road further away from it was an entirely legitimate proposition. So another somewhat ‘ugh’ that Elected Members don’t get their proper say and that it just gets left to the engineers – back in the day it wouldn’t have happened in Henderson.

Under the gun: State of Florida is suing Pfizer don’t you know, which you can read about HERE – remember them? Florida’s complaint under its consumer protection law seeks $10,000 per violation plus disgorgement of profits, which sounds a mouthful but I am guessing could add up to quite a lot. I recall an educated pundit saying around 2022 that by the time these drug companies get revealed the ones responsible would be long gone and the money hidden away – I am guessing that will be the case but hope it isn’t.

Fridays don’t put on the glasses if you want to stay asleep: