Local Waters Done Well

💧 Issue: Local Waters Done Well – Reform or Rebrand?

📌 Overview

From early 2025 Council was considering how water services will be delivered under reform: multi-council CCO, local CCO, or in-house. But the process raised a lot of questions.

Not just about pipes. It’s also about power and transparency.

⚠️ My Concerns

  • Documents withheld: Councillors only given slide presentations prior to important decision making, not full reports.
  • External review blocked: Refused PDF copies for third-party review.
  • False urgency: Decision rushed under central government pressure.
  • Key staff unaccountable: Lead advisor’s resume withheld, and I wrote more about this here.
  • Status quo bias: In-house model appears preselected.

🔝 My Position

I support reform when necessary, but I reject decisions made in the dark.

I called for clarity, access, and full analysis. What I received: pushback and delay.

🗓️ Timeline

  • Feb 2025: Options presented but without any financial analysis or documents being shared.
  • Mar 2025: Workshop held for elected members, my concerns are raised over lack of any analysis or reporting.  There was also a presentation by Waikato Waters Done Well representatives which was not recorded due to equipment failures.
  • Apr 2025: Workshop held for elected members including from Department of Internal Affairs (DIA).  Final decision for a preferred Council position before public consultation was imminent, and prior to this workshop still no reports including any sort of financial analysis had been provided to elected members – yet during this workshop the staff preferred option for an enhanced in-house model was still acquiesced to. My subsequent request for information to enable a third-party review was blocked, with confidentiality being stated as a reason but never properly justified.
  • Jun 2025: Council meeting was held on 24 June to ‘debate’ the decision, but effectively it was a tickbox exercise with my own dissenting opinion that a Council Controlled Organisation (CCO) might be more transparent and accountable being quite thoroughly squashed. I wrote a brief write-up about it here.

📂 Supporting Content

🔍 Unanswered Questions

  • Why no full reports to elected members during the decision making process?
  • Why is third-party scrutiny so strongly resisted?
  • Who is guiding this behind the scenes?