Tag: jma

Fridays Fixing Bayonets

24 April 2026

Daniel 1:8: “But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank; therefore he requested of the chief of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself”.

I had the Biblical character of Daniel pointed out to me twice this week as relevant to positions like mine in secular governance, and the analogy is apt. It is every bit akin to a den of lions, and it takes more than just willpower to overcome the gravity of this world which pulls so hard. Great men, and women, are required to pull this nation back to the greatness it once was and can still be. So stand firm wherever you are, and dare to stand alone. Because others will see and follow.

Council was simmering this week and not a whole lot to report, except it has struck me that the effort to uplift it from its current setting can be extraordinarily hard and perhaps isn’t really worth the sacrifice. Where we have landed I believe, is a place quite different to the past when there was tension in the system to keep a lid on. A time when there was common purpose and intent, and a real sense of public service. I say systemic failure is why rates keep rising, and unless the current system changes the only way I see for tension to be applied is from above – not governments so much because they come and go – but from those you elect to locally govern. What would a true Anzac do?

However, for those you elect to make that change, they have to be able to have their say. Last week Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee walked out of a Council meeting because he was prevented from asking questions of staff (you can view his social media post including the exchange HERE and read the media story about it HERE). I have received that sort of treatment many times before in my three or so years on Taupo District Council, and continue to still do so (local sleuth Sophia M Smith also wrote a recent piece on the topic HERE). At the end of the day, it is 100% the responsibility of the Chairperson to stop this nonsense happening and nobody else, so in Councillor Lee’s case his Mayor was undoubtedly complicit. My number one 2025 election pledge was to Restore Democracy in Council Chambers, because if that doesn’t happen then nothing worthwhile afterward can. Perhaps I should start to walk out more often, what do you think?

On that note I attempted to table a Notice of Motion for next weeks Council meeting which you can read HERE, but thus far have been thwarted by Chief Executive Julie Gardyne’s direct application of a technicality belying one of the very things I am wishing to highlight:

To cut a long story short, my notice was submitted a couple of hours after their official deadline (which I still dispute the interpretation of), and neither the Chief Executive or Mayor are so far willing to exercise their discretion to accept even as a late item. So I guess you will probably have to wait another month to hear how it goes down. Ugh, moving right along…

A couple of workshops we did have this week included a workshop on Property Revaluations which you can watch HERE. Not a lot of consequence that I can recall from that, except that one thing which could make a big difference was not a topic of discussion – Differential ratios between business/commercial and residential. The current setting in Taupo is 1.8 and apparently has been for quite some time, and it would take a Long Term Plan (LTP) round of probably controversial public consultation to amend – because changing that figure would shift the rates burden to either side of the equation. So its not something this Council would lightly dare to touch without much consideration, but I think could contemplate. Of interest a Chatgpt scan of settings elsewhere around the country (shown right) demonstrates that figures can vary widely.

There was a Taupo Airport Authority (TAA) workshop on a proposed District Plan change which you can watch HERE. I have been on the TAA committee the past three years, and it surprised me that there had been little or no protective designations already in place as with most other airports, so I don’t see this as very controversial and just needs to be played out.

There was also a lengthy workshop for Elected Members on Tuesday entitled “Long Term Plan Wrap Up”, and despite all the previous LTP workshops being public viewable was held behind closed doors on the spurious grounds of “the possibility that sensitive material will be addressed, including that they may impact staff employment”. Myself and at least one other Councillor disputed beforehand that there was no justification to keep things under wraps, and as far as I am concerned there was virtually no sensitive material discussed and it certainly was never mentioned the laying off of swathes of staff. Not that the four-hour workshop was riveting viewing or anything, and I rather suspect that certain Elected Members don’t want people to see their commitment to reigning in rates isn’t perhaps quite as strong as some of their election campaigning spoke to. But I did mention that the $70M bridge over the Waikato was surreptitiously put into the last LTP without the required debate, which Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor probably wouldn’t want you to hear about because he was instrumental to make that happen. And that places like Waikato District Council which managed to achieve a below inflation rates increase this coming year are anomalies which are best not talked about…because they probably fiddled the numbers anyway.

At the outset of the workshop staff presented us with three options: A/ Implement proposed rates cap range of 2-4% from July 2027; B/ Transition to a rates cap range of 2-4% by July 2029; or C/ Wait until 2029 to comply. Instead of any debate, vote or even show of hands, the discussion morphed into something resembling what I have seen every year last term:

Things are tough, we’re doing our best, see it could be worse, now give it a rest.

(Yawn) so apart from all that, what else is going on?

Daring to be Davina: Kings Counsel Colin Judd gives a stirring inditement of Far North Councillor Davina Smolders brave stand against her own bunch of miscreant members elect which you can read HERE. This is a story really worth following and Shane Jones ill-thought words about it I am sure will come back to haunt him. Local Government Minister Simon Watts says he is looking into it and will have a response in about a month. I hope all this publicity makes a difference, because any time I have called on Ministers to help out the response has always been the same: “its a local issue that needs to be dealt with locally”. Not this time around Minister Watts, its time to do your job. But one of KC Judd’s comments stuck with me as quite relevant to the Taupo JMA saga we have going on.

On that note, I was recently sent this 2011 thesis by a Sonja Hancock entitled “Joint Management Agreement between Taupo District Council and Ngati Tuwharetoa: A Summary of lessons for local government”. If we put aside the accusations of me scaremongering for a moment, why don’t you read the concluding paragraph for yourself:

Also on that seeming endless note, I submitted some legal and financial questions about the JMA which you can read HERE and which our Chief Executive neatly deflected. If this Council gets it wrong which it very well could, I perceive an expensive Judicial Review is just around the corner because there are people out there to make it happen. Question is though – will they carry it through?

Late item on Council spending: I used my discretion to include this letter to Mayor and Councillors from intrepid retired engineer and Taupo resident Phil Shields, and his final statements are precisely on point (except I think we do need consultants some of the time):

Fridays I don’t know why but this just struck a nerve for me:

Fridays Dash for The Line

17 April 2026

“Why me, and what’s it all for anyway?”

Genesis 25: 29-34: “Now Jacob cooked a stew; and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary. And Esau said to Jacob, “Please feed me with that same red stew, for I am weary.” Therefore his name was called Edom. But Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright as of this day.” And Esau said, “Look, I am about to die; so what is this birthright to me?” Then Jacob said, “Swear to me as of this day.” So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. And Jacob gave Esau bread and stew of lentils; then he ate and drank, arose, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.”

I have always related to Esau much more than Jacob, who later on at his mother’s bequest through subterfuge tricked his father Isaac into giving him the elder brothers birthright blessing. That act seemed manipulative and devious, yet it started with a message from God that it would be so, and all Esau really wanted was a good feed after a hard days hunt. Are these things forgone conclusions before they even happen, and from the beginning of Creation does God know the future of you and I along with all the choices we will ever make? Perhaps it doesn’t make much difference and it will always be a mystery in this lifetime anyway, but I still want to know.

Again not much officially happening on the Council front this week, unless you count last weekends Supercar event which I still maintain is not a fraction as entertaining or exhilarating as a good motorbike sidecar speedway (not even any decent crashes!). By the way if anybody is wanting to set up a decent speedway track I am sure we could find some spare Council land with a peppercorn rent to go with it – so consider that as a pledge for next election. We did also have a promised cyclone that never did eventuate to cancel the Sunday racing, I was a little put out that the Taupo landfill was shut all day as a precaution (couldn’t we have at least waited to see if the wind got up?). I did find it interesting though that the Mayor of Wairoa refused to assent to a State of Emergency in his district, something which I discern our own Mayor John Funnell might have considered if given the option.

Baddies or the goodies? But we did have a couple of things happen, including that Mercury Energy pop in for a one hour session with Elected Members on Tuesday to educate about how it is with them and us (unfortunately not recorded for public consumption). There was some discord between Mangakino Councillor Hope Woodward and one of the Mercury experts, who was claiming that Mercury are not at all responsible for the algae blooms in the Upper Waikato river despite some independent scientific advice claiming otherwise. Mercury were implying that farm runoff is the main instigator, but Councillor Kylie Leonard disputed that. It was at least acknowledged that the hydro schemes which were introduced in the 1960’s or so did helpfully prevent some of the awful downstream flooding of the Waikato River which Turangi elder Councillor Greenslade even manages to remember – but it seems to come at the cost of eroded lake foreshores (south end especially) and health of the Upper Waikato waters. These are problems which aren’t going away, and there are clearly two sides to this story which aren’t being fully heard. Lastly and according to them, Mercury are the most significant ratepayer in the District – so I am not sure why we aren’t yet talking about partnership deals and enmeshing their staff into Council operations like we are with another of our local ratepayers. Any idea, people?

Kinloch Kiddies win a battle: There was also the Kinloch Kindergarten workshop paper presented on Tuesday by Council staff and the Kinloch Families Trust which you can view HERE. Perhaps if you are not a Kinloch local or into kindergartens this might be of only passing interest, but I reckon it sets the scene for something of a quite positive landmark for a way forward for this Council. The proposition is for around $500K of development contributions to be put towards land acquisition for the Trust to build a new kindergarten/ community centre. It is all quite inspirational stuff and not at all normal for local communities to get behind something like this, with the only hesitations of Elected Members around the potential opportunity cost of spending the money here and not somewhere else (the rates burden is apparently zero). The decision isn’t going to be made until at least May, and I am glad the Trust stuck at it because a year or so ago when they came to us with the same proposal the response was quite the contrary and negative. My advice to them at the time was to keep at it because so much of Council “official policies” are subject to interpretation, and it is really up to Elected Members to decide these things and not staff. So I am glad they listened.

Okay apart from that, what else is happening?

Joint Management Plan (JMA) latest: Not a whole lot that I am pertinent to be able to report on, but local amateur journalist sleuth Sophie M Smith put up an article on the JMA which you can read HERE. My advice to Sophie is that she needs to understand that the JMA is not just procedural as she implies, and that she needs to start following dynamic Far North Councillor Davina Smolders on Facebook. Davina is the person outing her Council on unethical constitutional arrangements which she says effectively give power to unelected representatives. Even though final decisions are for Elected Members to make, please recognise that the recommendations of committees do significantly shape the decisions that get made. Anybody who has spent any time as an Elected Member will recognise this, and our own JMA is no different. Yes there does have to be a new JMA, but there is no requirement to give away any more influence than strictly necessary, and at the end of the day constituents will be the ones paying for it.

As to only be expected Hobsons Pledge are piping in about that situation up north which you can read about HERE, with a snippet of their commentary below which I say absolutely does apply here:

Lost in translation: Rotorua Lakes Council seems to be getting some significant interest which you can read about in this social media post from Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee. The gripe is around an untranslated eight-minute karakia ceremony at the start of one of their Council committee meetings, and although I haven’t read all 500 comments and perhaps Roberts followers are already biased – but the consensus seems to be that such a carry on is quite disrespectful to the audience, and I have to agree.

Dear Auditor General: I was passed this letter of complaint to the Auditor General about Taupo District Council, not sure where on earth this is headed but I haven’t come across this author Pee Kay before, and they are clearly interested in Taupo so thought to share.

Order of the rabbit: Democracy Project ran this intriguing piece lately about dysfunctional Wellington City Council claiming that there was a now defunct secret society of staff which ran the place (you can read it HERE). The article contains a lot more info than just that of course and I have no evidence to show anything like that has ever existed here in Taupo, but I can absolutely sympathise with the snippetted comment below

Who is really running the Country, is it the politicians or the bureaucrats? In New Zealand it is the bureaucrats according to this interview with Dr Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director of the NZ Initiative which you can listen to HERE. I was particularly interested in the below snippet, which is totally relevant to local government and a reason the likes of Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has his own Mayoral executive team separate from Council staff – and I bet Taupo Mayor John Funnell wishes he had one too.

“Virtually every other developed democracy gives its ministers at least some say over who leads their departments. France, Germany, Sweden, Italy and the United Kingdom all figured this out long ago. In Germany, ministers appoint their top officials from a pool of qualified candidates. When a new government takes office, incoming ministers can replace the top officials with people committed to delivering their programmes. Ninety per cent come from within the career service, not from party backrooms. The officials below are protected by statute and cannot be removed on a whim. A new government changes only the top officials. Everyone else stays. Germany gets plenty wrong, but on this question, it found an answer that works“

Stop the kiddies drowning: It has struck me that manhole safety grilles like shown right could be useful around here, not only for worker but kiddy safety – I was working at Waitakere City when a toddler drowned in one of them during a heavy rain event and public life for Council workers became quite unpleasant because of it. I have done some digging to find out that Watercare in Auckland use them frequently and Tauranga City puts them in for every new install, and at around $600 each aren’t a bad idea for near playgrounds especially. So I will put it into the Council suggestion box to consider.

Council building Part 2: Sophie M Smith has put out the second of her series on the Taupo District Council building saga and how it all came to be, which you can read HERE. My own take which I have reiterated many times, is that there was a misguided determination to get a new building come hell or high water, and the demolition of the original Council building happened without any real analysis of the future consequences. I think it would make a great case study for current batch of Elected Members to learn some lessons such as what pre-determined decision making looks like, and how to avoid being led by the nose by staff with an agenda – but I doubt that will happen.

How to save money: The Taxpayers Union are at it again this time with a publication claiming 103 ideas for Councils to save money such as paying back debt, cutting back on Councillor lunches (I can’t agree with that one), and even our own Boom Boom the dinosaur gets a dishonorable mention. Taupo resident Phil Shields pointed this document out to Councillors last week, attached to his quite pointed letter which I thought worth reprinting below. Phil is a retired Council engineer of many decades experiences both in New Zealand and the UK where he originates from, so he knows a thing or two about the dire situation we now find ourselves in. Bring back the days of the City Engineer!

South lights up: This came across my purview recently as I am in touch with a Councillor down there, regarding small town Lincoln in the the Selwyn district which has been slated for a series of new traffic signal intersections down their main street (ring any bells, Taupo?). You can read some about it in this social media post from local Zoran Rakovic HERE. From my own point of view as somebody well versed in their application, there are much misconceptions about roundabouts such as they are always less safe for pedestrians and cyclists, and are so much more expensive than traffic signals. I say that a well designed roundabout can be better for pedestrians especially, and it is fairly well known in the transportation industry that Christchurch is traffic signal happy compared to many other parts of the country. Here are some roundabout solutions which I developed for urban areas, viable for places like Lincoln and Taupo too. 

Fridays budgetary advice for governments everywhere and they even have a Duncan:

Fridays Stay and Fight or Walk Away?

10 April 2026

Quote for the week: “F… Off” (Mayor Moko Tepania of Far North District Council)

Genesis 16:11-12: “Behold, you are with child, and you shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man; His hand shall be against every man,
And every man’s hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren“.

I am no Biblical scholar, but am aware that Ismael the first son of Abraham is said to be the ancestor of Northern Arabs and of the prophet Muhammed himself. That Moslems have been the biggest challenge to Christianity for the past 1000 years or so is fairly indisputable, unless you wish to also count the anti-God movement which enveloped the Western and Communist world since Darwin times of the 19th century – but I am increasingly now seeing that as only a historical blip. The significant majority of people in this world believe in one God who created everything, but its the question of which God that still divides us.

Greetings people, and although we haven’t had much formal happenings in Council this past week there are certainly a few things going on in the background like a few wars. The fuel crisis doesn’t seem as if it will be letting up very soon, and quite ironically we have all the petrolheads descending on this town for the Supercar meet. I am not one myself and can generally think of better things to do, but I plan to check it out on Sunday when the exciting weather is expected to arrive and there might be some exciting crashes (Councillors get complimentary tickets). But unfortunately some saner heads than mine have prevailed to reschedule all the big races to finish up Saturday. Having said all that, we do actually get a bit happening here compared to say, a place like Ashburton, and although the loads of people can at times get tiresome at least Taupo can’t be accused of being too sleepy.

This week we just had an Elected Member induction session on cybersecurity and AI, and one worthwhile thing I did learn is that if you accidentally press the wrong button on your phone which goes to one of those dodgy sites which access all your data – immediately press the “Airplane” mode to cease the connection and hopefully prevent further damage. Another viable alternative is to right there and then totally demolish your phone, but the former option is easier and cheaper.

We also yesterday had the second of our Water Services Committee meetings, and if you are interested in water infrastructure I really do recommend you have a watch of the 90 min meeting HERE with the minutes and agenda as always available HERE. We had a very informative presentation by Council asset manager wastewater Michael Cordell about the state of wastewater infrastructure (from about the 2 min mark), and afterwards some discussions about water services policy. The Taupo Wastewater plant in particular is facing some immediate future challenges, with the new wastewater standards in place that more severely limit how much nitrogen we are allowed to dispense to the currently irrigated land disposal sites – Houston, we have a problem. I’ll leave a couple of the relevant slides below, and note that the dotted line forecast departs the current reality in 2027 which is very soon.

My greatest question about this committee and its stated policy objectives is this (and I am not alone):

Will we be testing value for money and affordability, or is the primarily focus on monitoring delivery and compliance?

Thus far, it seems to be heading towards the latter. and I am not assured this committee will not become the tick-boxing exercise I strongly suspect it will. Because you will be the ones paying for it, and there is unfortunately no rates cap going to be in place to affect this very substantial aspect of Council spending.

And as far as drinking water is concerned, as I see it Elected Members in this Water Services Committee have two main objectives: 1/ Ensuring that money is spent wisely; and 2/ Ensuring that drinkable water delivered to constituents is safe. The water regulator and Ministry of Health are not responsible for satisfying these outcomes – we are. And are we over-investing to meet regulatory requirements that is beyond what delivers real community benefit? I strongly suspect that we are, because the benefits versus costs are simply not being measured.

Apart from that, we have:

Joint Management Agreement saga continues: This week Taupo Mayor John Funnell put out a statement about the JMA which you can read HERE that caused quite a stir with Maori Ward Councillor Wahine Murch put out her own social media response HERE where she asserts the Mayor has got it wrong:

“Of particular concern are comments suggesting the JMA would result in “ratepayers being governed by people they cannot remove at an election.” This misrepresents the agreement. JMAs do not transfer governance of our district; they provide a statutory framework for joint management with partners like the Tuwharetoa Māori Trust Board. Mischaracterising it in this way can create unnecessary confusion and alarm” (Councillor Wahine Murch).

I wouldn’t have put it quite the same way as Mayor Funnell did, because in my mind since this JMA retains much of the ultimate decision making to Elected Members then that means it is technically more of a “co-management” rather than co-governance agreement. But there the hair-splitting ends, because I say that enmeshing any private entity into Council operations as the current draft JMA is proposing to do will absolutely have undue influence to Council affairs – it is foolish or naive to think otherwise.

On that note, ACT MP Cameron Luxton put out a social media message recently that pointedly reflects to where places like Taupo find ourselves now (snippet below):

And while we are on that theme, a lot of people including myself are very inspired and impressed by Councillor Davina Smolders of Far North District Council who was this week speaking out against her own Council on the Duncan Garner podcast which you can watch HERE. Man oh man, I thought I had it tough here, but that place is a world apart in terms of the abuse and threats she has copped for speaking out. You really need to hear it for yourself, including that their Mayor Moko Tepania is acting like a complete nob and telling Duncan to F… Off. I know that I give Mayor John Funnell a hard time on occasion, but he has never told me to do that. I really do hope for the sake of Far North constituents that the government steps in to sort that mess out, and it really does sound like a mess. If you want to follow Davina’s exploits you can find her Facebook page here and I have already ticked subscribe.

Duncan bleating on: Although it seems trivial by comparison to the above, to follow up on my failed Notice of Motion last Tuesday to elevate Elected Members to a level playing field with members of the public in terms of freedom of expression in our own Council Chambers, I put together a subtitled version of the unfolding 30 min drama which you watch HERE. I learned a few important things from that experience: (i) we have a Chairman Mayor who doesn’t understand that when you give the majority an opportunity to quench the minority, they will take it almost every time; (ii) our first term Councillors (with the notable exception of Cr Woodward) do not yet appreciate the value of free expression in Council Chambers; (iii) I had assumed this matter was 1 + 1 = 2 to understand, but some voiced reservations by even those voting in support may have swayed some fence-sitters to vote against (only myself and Cr’s Rankin, Greenslade, Woodward voted in support, with the rest against and the Mayor abstaining). So behind the scenes diplomacy in advance is obviously required for even the most basic of propositions to change a status quo, which this surely was.

Councils are not signatories to the Treaty: Michael Laws (who happened to get a A+ on a Treaty of Waitangi paper at university) reminds us on his recent podcast. In this he points out a relatively recent court decision from Marlborough where it was affirmed that Councils are not signatories and have no stipulated obligations to the Treaty of Waitangi. Now I don’t always like what Michael Laws has to say and at times he can be downright rude, but on his call for complete reform of local government to sort out the total mess its in including stuff like this, I totally agree.

Transport going Nuclear? As your representative to the Waikato Regional Transport Committee on Friday I attended the second workshop for the Transport Long Term Plan which you can watch HERE. If transportation is your area of interest I do recommend it worth tuning in, because we are at the stage of putting down all the priorities that will contribute towards where quite a lot of money will go. Okay its not edge of your seat stuff and Taupo is certainly the most strained district in the region for this aspect, but I managed to poke in about a few things. Hamilton Councillor Sure Moroney pretty much outed herself as an avowed climate warrior who several times piped up with comments to the effect that we should be getting all cars off the road. I almost laughed out loud when she also effectively stated that economic prosperity is linked to dependence on fossil fuels! I commented that the last government exacerbated the current fuel crisis because it stupidly pretended we could do without oil, gas and the Marsden Point refinery, or even sensible speed limits – but if in the future we decided to go nuclear then things could turn around. Taupo already has some cooling towers, so why can’t we just build a few more?

Help for the Homeless: Rotorua has a free laundry and shower service for the homeless which is now closing to some dismay. This article only caught my eye because of recent discussions in Chambers about the future of the Superloo toilets in Taupo town centre that is frequented by homeless for a similar purpose, and is being mooted for removal of its shower service because of security concerns. I am in two minds about this – on the one hand we don’t want public facilities turned into unsightly or hazardous places to frequent, but on the other shouldn’t we be offering a helping hand to those most in need? The problem is that these things never come for free, and the Rotorua facility is ceasing because the government funding ceased. I see an opportunity here for some local philanthropy.

Fridays lesson on how to think of your average local politician:

Fridays Done, But Are You Done Too?

27 March 2026

It’s all very well to say about JMA’s, but what is the point of them anyway?

Genesis 6:3: “And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years”.

We are not made to live forever, but that verse from Genesis 6:3 isn’t widely interpreted to mean we are capped at 120 years. Its context was that Noah had 120 years to build his Ark before the Flood came, and there is Biblical record of men living over that age well after that time. Noah for example, is said to have lived over 900 years. How so can that be? It is speculated that in the time of Creation, genetics were purer with sickness almost unheard of. There was no prohibition on marrying ones sister, for example (which was hard to avoid when there are only a handful of people to choose from) – and it is held that subsequent corruption of our genetics is the reason we don’t do that now. Sure there will have been accidents, but they didn’t have motorbikes back then.

Hey ya’ll its another week done, and finally we have some cooler weather arrive! About time I say, and its these middle seasons which I like most. So what have we going on in the Council space lately, at least with your Elected Members? Not a lot it has to be said, just some Long Term Plan (LTP) thingamies which wrapped up, an update with Turangi buses, and also an interesting little episode worth mentioning just because it illuminates how this Council can operate sometimes.

Lets start with the LTP. On Tuesday we wrapped up the preliminary workshop sessions which staff are using to set the general direction we want to head, and you can watch that session HERE. But for me the greatest elephant in the room for all of this is that we haven’t set any decisive rate targets to work backwards from, and it appears we might just be going through the motions to superficially justify the carrying on of business as usual – just like we have done every single year I have been on Council. However, even though there is no sign of any sort of comprehensive review of staff numbers and salaries (which comprise the significant portion of operational expenditure), there is at least a few encouraging signs that some staff are taking to heart the community have had enough. Like the idea of selling off Council assets to pay down debt and/or offset rates (otherwise known as ‘rationalising Council assets‘), and perhaps we will start to get serious about things like some sort of bed tax on non-commercial accommodation providers (Rotorua and Queenstown rating models may get a look at). But I don’t see these as significantly meaty to make such a big difference, so we will just have to see how it pans out. As I have stated many times before, and the maths is incontrovertible – unless we fix rates to consumer levels of inflation, then those on fixed incomes will inevitably be crippled.

I do have an update on Turangi buses – Waikato Regional Council (WRC) have told us that if Taupo District Council (or anybody really) can come up with a $170K injection, they will put on a five-day a week 33 seat bus service between Taupo and Turangi with timetable of our choice. We are still to ascertain a few extra details such as if this means any number of trips per day or just a few, but the overwhelming public responses received thus far from Turangi Councillor Sandra Greenslade’s community conversations (including social media) are speaking quite loudly that there will be no problem filling seats. With the price of fuel as sky high it is right now, I reckon this is the least we can be doing to help Turangi out and my money is on it will be popular after the Middle East war is over too. Canterbury Regional Council is also doing their bit to push public transport in these trying times, I reckon we should be doing the same. But we only have a week to decide, so keep your fingers crossed this idea gets past the line. Otherwise the Turangiites may start coming for us, and $170K seems a pretty cheap way of avoiding that.

And then there was this on Tuesday as well: Raukawa Settlement Trust and Taupō District Council Co-Governance Committee hui. What is that all about you may ask, and what has it got to do with me? Some of you will have to please forgive my ignorance, but I only just learned that Raukawa is an Iwi and not a river, and that they have been working a Joint Management Agreement (JMA) with Taupo District Council since 2013. What’s that you say, a JMA? Isn’t that what all the fuss is being made about lately? Well yes, and no. This is a different JMA and only concerns the Raukawa sections of the Waikato river (which bits I am not exactly sure, because I thought they are the same bits covered in the new JMA). But irrespective of all that, I figured this would be worth tuning into just to see how these JMA’s can play out and what good they can do. Because if we are going to do something bigger and supposedly better, that’s a thing to do right? Here is where things start to get interesting…

This Raukawa committee meeting is an annual affair and open to the public, and yet was never advertised (except for a secluded item in the Council website HERE), and as at the time of writing the meeting agenda has still not been made available to anybody else but committee members. A few days prior, I recognised the relevance of this meeting to the JMA we are negotiating now, and requested to our Chief Executive that it be audio-visual recorded for public record. The response I received was that the idea of recording would only be tabled at the meeting and subject to committee member approval. Long story short – the recording started happening a minute or so after that item was voted and approved around 20 minutes into the meeting, so you can watch the remaining two hour proceedings HERE. Fact of the matter though, is that there was virtually no public notification, and that recording might not have happened at all. I had to request from one of the committee members to send me a copy of the agenda which you can read HERE.

Okay Duncan, so apart from that yet another example of closed door opacity from this Council, what else is there to be made of all this? Well you probably have to watch for yourself and truth be told I put it on 1.75 times play speed to get through it, but my take is that this committee has all the hallmarks of a friendly hui without much doey. There was an early suggestion to change the title from ‘Co-governance‘ to ‘Co-management‘ (for political reasons I am fairly sure), and a few interesting things got raised by Mangakino Councillor Hope Woodward with questions to Council staff about experienced river water quality problems (watch from HERE), and there is a recent Waikato Times article emphasising that point. But as far as I could tell this committee made absolutely no decisions at all, and anything that does eventuate only happens in the background as implemented by Council staff. But I suppose that is inevitable for a committee which meets only once every 12 months, and if this is an example of how a JMA can work in practice then the public should at least be concerned about such lightweight governance – and for that reason alone, was perhaps why it went unadvertised. But I do hear that the subsequent afternoon tea went down very well.

And on that note, I caught a recent social media commentary regarding the proposed JMA for Taupo waters:

“I want to offer a word of warning to Council about an element of the Act that gives me grave concern. As background, before retiring I was a Commercial Manager who was involved in the development and negotiation of many commercial contracts and I would never enter into a contract that could not be terminated once established which I understand is what the Act anticipates in the JMA. Contracts are put in place to formalise conditions that the parties would like to operate under as things are known today, but no one is able to foresee what will happen in the future that could make the contract unworkable. Therefore the Council should not enter into any agreement that cannot be terminated. This is just good contractual/commercial practice! The Council has no control or power over what another contracted party, such as the Tuwharetoa Māori Trust Board, may evolve into over time. Hypothetically just to emphasise this point only, what if the TMTB were to be taken over by a foreign political or ideological movement as an extreme example? Would we still want obligations to that evolved party? My suggestion is for Council to advise government that it cannot enter into good faith contracts on a “no termination” basis and advise them you will not progress until this is removed as a requirement of the Act!” 

And after I commented that it was spurious to believe Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board (TMTB) can possibly represent the best interests of all Maori, I received this response:

“You act like the Tūwharetoa Māori Trust Board is an unregulated entity. Of course they are accountable. They operate under the Māori Trust Boards Act 1955, which sets out governance, financial reporting, and accountability requirements, just like any other entity. They’re required to produce annual reports, have audited accounts etc. It’s no wonder you are getting hammered with accusations of racism, your comments are so out of touch. Do better”.

So I decided to do better and ask Chatgpt this question: “What can you tell me please about the legislated ‘transparency and accountability’ of Maori Trust Boards to the public and their own members, relative to the requirements of local government? I have been pointed to the Maori Trust Boards Act 1955 (which was apparently superceded in 2011)”. You can read the full ChatGPT response HERE but here are a few snippets below:

And for a supplementary question about the transparency and accountability of specifically Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board to its own beneficiaries:

So until I receive evidence to the contrary, I remain undeterred in saying that the public has every right to be concerned with any partnership deals and whatever they are called. Down south Federated Farmers are up in arms about impending Nga Puhi undue influences to their way of life (will they be doing the same here?), and Hobsons Pledge are putting out some alarm bells about Taupo as well.

So what else is new?

O Delegations, Delegations, Wherefore Art Thou Delegations? Following the release a few weeks ago of my presentation on Financial Delegations which you can watch HERE, I had one of the elected members follow up with a couple of questions:“Why would staff need to work the weekends if they do value for money projects”, and “Isn’t doing the cheapest job more expensive in the long run?” My responses are shown below:

“Throwing a big pile of money at a single project is virtually always less time consuming for project managers than trying to handle multiple projects, and I have certainly experienced this first hand. Especially if that work gets handed to contractors or consultants to undertake as usually happens with almost all Councils nowadays. Yes there are lazy Council workers who take the easy path as at any other workplace, but with their performance is often not measured by results on the ground but by accountants who look at balanced books and budgets spent on time. It is also my experience in the public sector, that people are more likely to be elevated past their level of competence.

On your second point, I will defer to the Dunedin cheapy roundabout example. They may seem more expedient than the ideal, but the cost of doing nothing has to be weighed up also. Intersections are the flashpoints and bottlenecks of any transport network, and waiting to do the rolls royce option every time is simply not tenable when we have crashes and driver delays happening every day. These are costs to society which is the role of a Road Controlling Authority to duly address, and I was greatly surprised to find after moving here that instead of No.8 wire solutions which I would have expected of an overstretched provincial place, I see the rolls royce happening (and a few road safety disasters as well). That was entirely my original motivation to stand for Council”.

Dog attack in Turangi: Last weekend a roaming dog attack left a woman unconscious in Turangi when she tried to protect her toddler. I am not sure if it has been properly reported to Council yet or even if it is widely known about in the Turangi area, but this coincides with a recent government announcement to try and tackle this issue more seriously. In the meantime though, I see that the only measures for the average person are: (1) Public need to report in detail about any incidents including dog identification, because action cannot be taken without this happening. Taupo District Council’s Antenno App is easy to use, and allows for anonymous reporting if you really wish; (2) Carry a big stick. I used to be a bicycle postie back in the day, and have figured out that unless a dog is on their own property some aggression on your behalf can often go a long way to defusing the situation.

Aussis get serious, so why aren’t we? Over the ditch it seems they aren’t very keen on E-bikes being used in an anti-social way, and that includes seizing and crushing any which go faster than their imposed 25 km/hr speed limit. As somebody who is great fan of personal mobility other than large boxed motor vehicles, I think they are taking things way too seriously – but I am sure there will be many Taupoite lake path users who will disagree.

Give money for more sculptures: If you liked Boom Boom the dinosaur or even if you don’t, the Taupo Sculpture Trust has a new website where you can keep informed with the latest developments and also give them some of your hard earned money towards the new. I am pretty sure that back in the day of Michelangelo it was only through individual sponsorship that the great classical sculptures ever happened at all, so here is a chance to be a part of it.

Balloons over Waikato : Last weekend I happened to be in Hamilton for this annual event, along with I estimate around 10,000 people who had a great time in the early morning seeing them all off. The Nightglow experience that evening with music set to earth-bound balloons – less exhilarating, and by all accounts the public transport after was absolute chaos as reported here.

And on that note, it just has to be said…

Fridays undisputed best balloon song of all time:

Fridays Feeble Foldback

20 March 2026

“I seek a place that can never be destroyed, one that is pure, and that fadeth not away, and it is laid up in heaven, and safe there, to be given, at the time appointed, to them that seek it with all their heart. Read it so, if you will, in my book” (John Bunyan)

Pilgrims Progress – Written by layman preacher John Bunyan whilst in prison, it is one of the most printed English books of all time, second only to the Bible in terms of copies sold and has remained continuously in print since its publication in 1678 with an estimated 250 million copies worldwide. I have read it more than once and if you are interested in poetic prose and a Protestant Christian message in simple relatable terms – I can think of no better book for thee.  

As I see it, this game of local government and politics is full of subjective opinions which masquerade as facts, and not only staff but Elected Members can use it to push their own agendas. That doesn’t necessarily exclude me, but I at least try to transparently separate the fact from the fiction. So what have we got this past week to subjectively opinionate on? We had some more Long Term Plan (LTP) discussions of which there are a couple of things of interest, and another one of the Joint Management Plan (JMP) workshops which included a few reveals, and it is getting attention from the likes of the organisation Democracy Action.

I also finally got around to putting out my talk of Delegations which has been floating around since before Christmas. Mayor Funnell hasn’t quite come around to the idea of letting Elected Members speak freely in Council Chambers, but I suspect where that attitude is really coming from. In any case, that bottleneck only pushed me to greater lengths and already some good feedback has been received – so I may do more in this format. The gist of my talk is that financial delegations at Taupo District Council fall woefully short of responsible governance oversight, and I reckon we need a new Financial Committee to make it start happening. You can watch it below:

On that note of letting elected members speak their piece, I have tabled a Notice of Motion for the next Council meeting on 31 March to address that very point and is shown below. I believe such a thing is quite fundamental to basic democracy in Council Chambers, and I won’t deny that a part of me resents having to expend energy trying to get it to happen. Call me black or white if you will, but as I see it any Elected Members who vote against it are the enemies of your democracy.

Okay lets start with the JMA workshop on Thursday which I really do recommend you watch HERE because a few things came out. We first kicked off with a statement from Mayor Funnell which is shown below, which was partly in response to some statements I made the last workshop about Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board (TMTB) questioning if they are an organisation which properly represents the interests of this district or its own members (at least I think that was the gripe, because it was never explicitly stated). This is based on my own previous assessment of these Maori Trust Boards including TMTB which you can read HERE, and I am still of that view. However, Mayor Funnell felt the need to apologise on behalf of everybody else at the beginning of the meeting as per below:

Maori ward Councillor Wahine Murch also weighed in with some invective near the end of the meeting when I raised a question about it (watch from HERE), and also put out a social media post about it where she asserted that I had been: “…attacking motives, spreading misinformation or undermining people and institutions”. My response to Wahine is that I have been doing my homework thank you very much, and that I am entitled to my view. TMTB is not a public institution governed by the same motivations and restraints as local government, so entering into any partnership deals with them should be done very warily. I also say that claiming they represent the best interests of all Maori in the district is spurious at best.

Apart from that, I asked for any success story examples from the JMA’s which Council are already involved in (and there are a few since 2009 which you can read about HERE). Because it just stands to reason doesn’t it, that if we are now talking about another JMA with an expanded scope over and above just the obligatory, that we should be looking for evidence of the benefits? And it is all about looking after the waters and environment, right? In any case, I was not able to elicit too much of a response on that question.

Why can’t we just sign up to the Mandatory Matters now? I get asked this quite a bit, and I have asked in Chambers too. The answer seems to be that, yes we could have signed up long ago, but TMTB aren’t satisfied with just that. There seems to be an underlying threat that the government could get involved, and either party has a right to complain because we are well behind the original schedule. But somehow I don’t think it would help TMTB’s case when they are the ones wanting all the extras.

Down south there are warnings being floated about by Federated Farmers with respect to various Council agreements with Ngai Tahu, I don’t know about the veracity of these claims, but I don’t think many people here want the same for Taupo. The bottom line for most constituents is what is this JMA really going to cost them?, and recall that last week I forwarded some challenging assertions about just that to our Chief Executive which you can read HERE and HERE. I haven’t received any answers yet except to say that they will be addressed later, but I am now requesting a response well prior to any subsequent workshops.

And what about the Long Term Plan (LTP)? We had another session in the series in Thursday which you can watch HERE and HERE if you have several hours to spare. We talked about such exiting things as Renewals, Depreciation, and Levels of Service, and also delved into some of the issues like transport, cemeteries, emergency management, dog control, policy planning and consents – all for staff to be better able to appreciate the direction that Elected Members want to head. I am once again encouraged by the impetus of a rates cap which is appearing to motivate the prospects of some tangible action, and it just goes to show that we have been way too slack for way too long.

On the subject of Level of Service, I did point out that although these are starting to be quite strictly applied by the government in the waters space, that doesn’t apply to transport. Nobody forced the people of Auckland to build their motorways – they chose to do it. We currently have a $70M line item in the LTP for a second road bridge across the Waikato just north of Taupo Township, but there hasn’t been a single debate in Council Chambers to decide if we really want to do it, or even a full assessment saying that we absolutely need it. I want those things to happen sooner rather than later, and you can read my previous views on that topic HERE.

Apart from that, I made a few observations and comments including: that perhaps it isn’t wise to be programming road maintenance projects that involve large volumes of asphalt during an oil crisis; my request that future kids playgrounds have more emphasis on playability and less on cultural aesthetics; a suggestion to emulate Selwyn District Council for fast growing Rolleston and consider issuing building consents prior to land titles (developers take note, if you want that thing to happen better start petitioning your Elected Members now); and finally my observation that erosion control measures could be more effective and expedient if the lake bed owner would be so good to allow off-shore engineering measures to be constructed.

And there’s really just a few other bits and pieces:

We have it good here: Friday I attended the first workshop at Waikato Regional Council towards a 10-year transport plan for the region, and it was highlighted to me how good we really have it here in Taupo. We are not city Hamilton with all its congestion and public transport demands, and we are not a Thames-Coromandel with scores of single-lane bridges and 10km traffic queues, and coastal roads falling into the sea every time they have a big storm. Taupo has pretty good roads, we don’t have many people, and we are that far inland to not get all the severe weather. But we are still working on those bus timetables including for Turangi, and hope to come to a resolution on that soon.

Run for my money: I must say that Mangakino Councillor Hope Woodward is giving me a run for my money with her expanding community social media updates like the one shown right, and her activism on behalf of her community is also to to be commended. Keep it up Hope!

Jonsie awards 2026: If you haven’t ever watched these then its high time you did. These are the annual Taxpayer Union awards to government and local government wasteful spending. The top awards this year for local government went to Tauranga Mayor Mahe Drysdale for spending $470K on coffee machines and beans – which on the face of it doesn’t so outrageous to people who adore coffee – so couldn’t anybody think up a better nominee on behalf of Taupo? You can watch the entire award ceremony HERE. But the top award of all went to Chris Hipkins leader of the Labour Party, his was a Lifetime Achievement of Waste award for blowing $35B during the Covid pandemic or $17K every NZ household. I got to admit, that is a once in a generation if not the century achievement and will be hard to ever topple – but I do really feel that previous Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern could have taken some of the glory.

Now its legal to drink alcohol at the Hairdressers! I never thought it was illegal anyhow, but now the government has stepped in to fix that dreadful shortcoming as well as a few of the other antiquidated alcohol laws.

Fridays Fabulous Feature: “Perverted by Language” is the album title by Mark E Smith of band The Fall, with the number below “Eat Y’self Fitter“. You mightn’t love the beats, but what an absolute poet!

Friday Cuts Which Matter

6 March 2026

To live is to grieve, to die is to not. Whoever has never grieved has never lived – they are only dead.

Genesis 1: 1-3: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light”.

Evolutionists who believe the Earth is billions of years old and that we came from monkeys have much greater faith than I, because as an engineer I know that good design doesn’t just happen by accident and no matter how long. Genesis 1 is about the beginning of the world, and I believe it happened that way. According to the chronology of Biblical characters and following its timeline through to Jesus, the world is roughly 5000 years old only. Here we have the world being created in just six days, and there is just one thing about all of this which I still find intriguing: The definition of a day is that it is one revolution of the earth – 24 hours of our time – right? But until the sun was created on the Fourth day, then that means there can’t have been any revolutions, so what exactly did one day represent on Days One to Three? But I am not stuck on it, and it doesn’t matter much to me.

This week in Council we Elected Members started to have a crack at the Long Term Plan (LTP), or rather the staff presented to us a bunch of material to start educating us just what it is all about (remember, some of us are only new to this). If you really want to, you can watch all three and a half hours of the workshop proceedings HERE (yawn).

These 10-year LTP’s are done every three years, in between which we just have the regular Annual Plans (AP’s). The last one was 2024-34, and we are already making a start on the one for 2037-37. It is really quite important actually, because now is the time we set the financial targets which matter for the next three years after. However I have come to realise that in the real world a 10 year plan is fairly spurious to guarantee anything at all really, and anyway we also have elections in between. A brief look below at the three previous LTP forecasts will make that abundantly clear, where you can see that every three years we are promised just a couple of years rates spike before things settle down -but they never actually do.

Perhaps I am just a simpleton, but I believe a good starting point for this process would have been to decide a rates target tagged to the consumer inflation which constituents experience – and just reverse engineer it from there. Just like any responsible householder or private business, and if that is motivation to think smarter and build smaller then that’s just what we need to do. Because the maths isn’t very complicated – people on fixed incomes simply won’t be able to afford to live in their own homes if we don’t act soon. A few of the other Elected Members seem to think this is impossible, but I just see it as a fact of life that we better get used to.

Reasons given by those sceptical that things can be reigned in can pretty much be summed up as: Because the government tells us to. I instead say that we are elected to work for the best interests our constituents, and Wellington is quite a long way away. And by the way, whatever happened to the good old Kiwi No.8 wire mentality to get a job done?

Anyway I did also make a little suggestion with regard to libraries, and that is that I would like to see them open on Sunday’s and one weekday evening just like a lot of other places and where I grew up. Because working people are usually busy Monday through Friday, and Saturdays can get pretty busy too. I think we should be able to manage it without increasing costs if we consider closing a weekday in lieu, and we also have an annual budget of $300K for new library books that may be able to be tapped into. Perhaps I am biased because I love books, but I reckon libraries are one of the few Council run places which give wildly great value for money. And here is something I only found out recently: $300K seems a lot for new books, and somebody has to decide which ones to buy – so why not make a request for a book you want? It may very well end up in the collection for others to enjoy.

Okay so what else?

Joint Management Agreement (JMA) saga continues: This week I had quite a pleasant surprise to be anonymously forwarded by a very smart constituent these two documents HERE and HERE, which make a number of assertions about its true cost to the average person and Council at large. Like say, an additional $3-6K and 3-5 weeks delay for every non-notified consent application, or $45-95K and 5-9 months delay if you want a notified Plan change. The person who put all of this together is no simpleton, and even if some of the figures turn out to be spurious then it is up to Council staff to push back. Next week I am going to ask them to exactly do that.

Conflict of Interest But Only if You Declare It: I have worked out that a loophole in this game of local body politics is that conflicts of interest are left almost at the complete discretion of individual elected members to proclaim. As I see it at present, the only thing that really matters is the court of public opinion, and things greatly need to be tightened up. This topic came up of late with this social media post regarding a speculated conflict of interest involving Taupo Ward Councillor Yvonne Westerman and her associated Bayleys real estate business doing sales for Council properties on Crown Road. The current limit of local financial interest for elected members is a paltry $25K per annum, which is probably just a fraction of the commission on just one of these land sales. I have had ludicrous conflict of interest accusations hurled my way before, but this is not one of those. I am hoping that the current governments attempts to clean up local government will address this large gap, but am not prepared to wager on it.

Turangi bus commuters could lose an hour: Okay recall a few weeks ago that I mentioned about Waikato Regional Council (WRC) having a relook at our public transport? Well it seems they have come up with a cunning plan to make things better for Turangi bus commuters by adding another days scheduled service to the current Mondays and Thursdays – but is it really? Somebody travelling to Taupo for the day currently gets around three hours to do their business before the return trip beckons, but the draft regime now being proposed is reducing this envelope to two hours only. Even with the proposed 33 seat bus for the Turangi service (the current bus seats only 12), a few people I have talked to including Turangi Councillor Sandra Greenslade and a handful of passengers as I took a trip for the first time yesterday (it was much more enjoyable than driving that windy route, and very cheap at just $7) think it could turn out to be quite a white elephant, because fewer people – not more – would probably subscribe to this lesser value service. Anyway I am heading off to Hamilton on Monday to try and talk some sense into them before it happens, and if it does happen is scheduled to happen in May with the draft timetable shown below:

And by the way, it has been inferred that a reason we don’t have an online booking system to guarantee a bus seat (like they do in Taumaranui, and by the way Turangi bound passengers have occasionally been stranded in Taupo before because too few seats) – is because it is felt that some older people in our district can’t handle digital transactions.

Anyway, I think if WRC had a bit more vision for the future, we would be looking at something more like this:

Cash no good and its staying that way: Following last week’s Public Forum presentation by Tristan Baynham regarding his disquiet and cash payments being disallowed at the Taupo Landfill from last August, Elected Members had a round table chat about it on Tuesday. Long story short – there is about a zero chance that decision will be reversed. But interestingly, there were two more reasons mentioned that actually seem to make sense. Balancing the books can apparently be a more than trifling hassle with cash, and there is a big thing around cash handling by staff with the presented temptation for them to make off with it. I am sure that Councillor Christine Rankin knows all about that with her recent Hospice experience which made the news. So for a few reasons there seems to be a strong case against the use of cash, and a few of them probably haven’t been mentioned up until now for sensitivity reasons. But I am not so sensitive to withhold it from you.

Sophie’s at it again: Local investigator/reporter Sophie M Smith put out a very interesting piece just yesterday, well I am very interested anyway. It is entitled “Part 1 – The Council Building Question: Starting at the Beginning“. Hooray, because I have been reckoning for ages that this would be a great subject to tackle for Elected Members to actually learn something from past mistakes instead of being continually placated and moving on to the next thing. You can read Sophies Facebook post HERE, and her main article HERE. Part 1 is just the introduction and I very much look forward to reading more. Good on ya Sophie, this has to be one of the biggest blunders this Council made the past few decades and it needs a light shone on it to ensure mistakes like it don’t happen again.

Get stuffed Wellington: Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown says no to Minister for Housing Chris Bishops information request. Its a fairly bland article, but I think the most interesting part of this story is that the Deputy Mayor is publicly disagreeing with Wayne and that Chris Bishop is not insisting on getting his piece of meat. Taupo is not as big and brutish as Auckland, but we should start sticking up for ourselves more to not get pushed around

Fridays why everyone is leaving New Zealand: I think this is a pretty good summary, and the solution seems pretty obvious to me:

Fridays February We’re Back!

6 February 2026

Okay folks, I’m back and to explain my absence: we have our first Council meeting of the year just yesterday, and until now there really haven’t been any Council happenings worth reporting on since Christmas. Basically over summer your Elected Members had around six weeks off with virtually nothing on our calendars. That is not to say that none of us did community stuff in that period, only that we aren’t called on to debate or decide anything.

Now for the bad news: I do believe our new Mayor is a dud, and I’m calling him out now.

Just like the Mayor before, and just like the past twelve years.

To explain myself:

Some of you may recall my 2025 election #1 priority to Restore Democracy which included to cease and desist the cynical use of Standing Orders to shut down debate and discussion. I can tell you that nothing has changed on that front and it was demonstrated quite clearly at yesterdays Council meeting, when my application to appear in the public forum to give a five-minute presentation was refused by Mayor Funnell – in direct breach of Standing Orders and under the artless claim that ‘an elected member is not a member of the public’.  You can watch the video recording here if you like, and it took several times longer to debate than it would have to simply hear me out. Pitiful, un-necessary, and all of it total bullshit. Basically in order to people please some others, Mayor Funnell decided to squash on me. I was hoping that the Mayor would get the idea after I wrote him this recent letter on freedom of expression for Elected Members, but it obviously didn’t register.

My #2 campaign priority was to Take Back Control of Council, and that means doing transparency for real by making sure that important discussions of Elected Members be audio-visual recorded for public record. Because so many times have I experienced the dark hole of that place, that I now count anything not done in the public arena simply doesn’t matter. The topic of my presentation: Delegated Authority of Elected Members. The current setting at Taupo District Council is that the Chief Executive has almost total unfettered control of financial expenditure with little accountability to Elected Members – and that is just mental. But they didn’t want you to hear about it, nor of the change made in 2021 which you never heard about to make it so. You see, they simply don’t want to be embarrassed by the fact that probably hundreds of dollars could have been shaved off your annual rates bill, if responsible fiscal oversight hadn’t been just willingly given away in a debate which probably lasted all of three minutes.

What has Mayor Funnell got to do with all this, you ask? Because he is the one who been delaying and deferring about my offered presentation on this topic since before Christmas, and he almost certainly doesn’t want it aired in public view. This is despite his campaign pledge for transparency and accountability, and along with his commitment to tie rates to inflation (which won’t be happening any time soon) – I do believe we are experiencing just another windbag politician. I was really hoping these next three years weren’t going to be a repetition of the last – and to be fair, we have some spirited newly elects who won’t let that entirely happen – but without firm and wise leadership at the helm I am already seeing the writing on the wall. Leadership isn’t taking a vote on every decision under the sun which is within the Mayor’s authority to make (as happened yesterday with the public forum) – instead that is a recipe for the continued tyranny of the majority. Just. Like. Before. And if we can’t even get the democratic institution of Council Chambers working properly where Elected Members are able to talk freely or even be granted equivalent speaking rights of an attending member of the public – there really isn’t any point of having elections at all. Making any worthwhile changes to the current direction set by the Chief Executive simply becomes impossible.

However I do believe in Miracles and make no claim to 100% know the future, and perhaps this post will help push for drastic change and very soon.

Okay apart from all that which was quite regrettable to have to write, what else do we have going on?

Community Forums/ Committees / Representative Groups / or Whatever: You may be aware that a bunch of talkfests have been happening the month of January about the way Council engages with communities going forward, and I turned up to a few of these myself. To be honest I haven’t taken great interest in this issue, because I believe that the mechanism of community engagement is a moot point if Council always just does what it wants to do anyway and irrespective of what the community say – and there are so many examples of that in recent history around here. But it is always good to get out and about every now and then, and I did get to visit the wonderful Waitahanui community hall and meet some of the people there (for one thing, I reckon they could do with a new basketball court). And I was reminded of the No.1 concern for Wairakei people which is their landlocked state with regard to walking and cycling.

Planning Bill Submission is there any point: We did discuss another couple of items on Thursdays meeting, and one of these was Councils submission to the two bills set to replace the Resource Management Act (RMA): the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill (read the minutes here, and watch the recording here from 17 min). I have to say that my own impression of any changes to the consenting process regime can be secondary to the manner it gets applied. In my own profession of transport engineering I have been involved in resource consent process for around 30 years – same RMA as back then, but a great shift in the way Councils have become much more of a hindrance than the help they used to be.  For example I can think of a time when Council officers had to find some very good reasons to justify to management why they want to decline. Now, the situation seems to have flipped 180 degrees so that the applicant has to justify why they deserve to be approved. This may sound like an inconsequential difference, but let me tell you it is not.

Our submission also mentions some trepidation about the Retail Distribution effects, and that we could end up with large Box stores or Malls in the suburbs and the Taupo Town Centre will die (as per places like Rotorua). Until now I had not appreciated that for Taupo this was a concerted policy of the planners, but if I am right to assume that the politics of Taupo is a main bottleneck – then things won’t be changing very much in a hurry anyway.

Climate Change Really? On Thursday we also received a staff paper which was entitled Review of Climate Change Risks (watch here from 46 min). My own thoughts on this topic are that apart for the ski industry and perhaps the odd brush fire, colder climates present greater challenges for this district than warm – and that is just a reflection on human habitation globally which has always flourished more easily in warmer climates. And I do know enough about climatology that things will get colder sooner or later (perhaps much soon than anybody expects), so when that happens it will present a much greater challenge (ski industry excepted).

We were presented with some extrapolations of future flooding, but I do have to admit a degree of scepticism because of two things: 1/ Our blessing of free draining volcanic soils (which is also a curse for farming); and 2/ We have about the mildest weather in the whole of the North Island, and as someone who likes a nice storm every now and then I do so miss the more exciting stuff they get on the Coast. We also confusingly heard that annual rainfall and number of heavy rainfall events are not predicted to increase, so that would mean many more sunny days and I can’t see that as a very bad thing.

Capping Rates Yeah Right: Yesterday we also had a workshop entitled Annual Plan: Initial Budgeting and Direction where staff gave us a heads up opportunity to influence the setting of budgets for the upcoming financial year (the workshop was audio-visual recorded so when that becomes available you can watch it here). I gave it my best shot to advocate that we stick to capping things off to the government imposed maximum of 4.0% even if it won’t be mandatory until 2029, and I am hoping the staff will present us with a decent set of scenarios to make that happen (we are talking around $3M of operational spend reductions). But I am clearly in a very small minority of Councillors prepared to even consider that notion, so it looks like we going to get lumped with the 6.7% as set out in the 2024-2034 Long Term Plan (LTP) and not a smidgen less.

Is this bias or what? Some of you may recall that during our Joint Management Agreement (JMA) workshop in December, I challenged the presenting lawyer, Paul Beverley, over his previous statements that “Māori have a deep and innate relationship with natural resources”, which to me suggests an assumption of environmental authority that not everyone would accept. At the time, he advised this position is reflected in legislation and offered to provide examples. I couldn’t turn down that offer, and a few days ago received the follow-up response from Paul, which you can read here.

After reviewing the material provided, I remain unconvinced that legislation establishes any inherent or exclusive environmental authority. The references cited recognise Māori cultural relationships with the environment, which councils must respect, but they do not require governance concessions beyond statutory obligations.

As elected members, we are expected to rely heavily on professional advice, which makes it even more important that such advice is carefully examined and openly tested. Given the long-term implications of a JMA, it would be prudent to ensure advice is tested from multiple governance perspectives, rather than relying on a single adviser whose philosophical framing and cultural premises may shape outcomes in subtle but significant ways. This JMA will therefore require very careful scrutiny to ensure it remains fair, proportionate, and accountable to all residents of our district. I encourage residents to read the material themselves and stay engaged as this agreement develops.

Speaking of consultants: One of my things to do under my #2 campaign pledge to Take Back Control of Council was for Elected Members to be able get independent opinions for all sorts of things from legal to engineering, and was thinking an annual budget of say $10K per Councillor could be set aside for this purpose. I don’t know of any Councils which have that policy already, but Wellington Mayor Andrew Little apparently did commit to this in his election campaign:“Give Councillors the ability to test the Council’s legal advice through a $50,000 per annum contestable legal advice fund.”I am told that in the last term Wellington had a lot of problems with Council officers telling Councillors they couldn’t do things “due to legal advice”, and sometimes even refusing to even provide Councillors with that advice.  I’m telling ya, this thing is a live issue around the country.

And what about the staff? Yesterday Elected Members also had a staff led training session about the Councils Procurement process, which is pretty much as dry a subject as it sounds. But I took the opportunity to express what I see as its biggest achilles heel and especially as it relates to a provincial town as Taupo: staff qualifications and experience, or lack thereof. Because staff are the ones who set the context and framework of any awarded contracts, so it can totally depend on what they do or don’t know, including what they are unaware of to even know to seek advice on. I have seen this so often in my professional engineering career it is just an assumed thing of the industry, and there is no way it doesn’t also apply here in Taupo.

Wayne Brown doesn’t have manners: Apparently leadership has many different faces, and it isn’t always pretty. Threatening to rearrange a journalists face is not exactly model behaviour from the Dummies Guide to Being a Mayor, but he did it.

JONESIE awards due 12th February 2026: For those who reckon Council wastes a lot of your money on stupid stuff, you only have another week to make a submission for the Taxpayer Union Jonesie Awards for wasteful government expenditure. You need to get specific examples with a full back story to have a chance of winning, I did have one lined up for submitting but as there is still a chance it won’t happen so might save it for next year. However for anybody out there who does have something I do encourage you to send it in.

Waitangi Day: Oh yes its Waitangi Day.

Fridays Finish Finale Finaali : Even though I have never been there, Canada and Canadians strike me as so similar to New Zealand and New Zealanders just without the sunny beaches. So sit back and enjoy this wonderful piece from my favourite Canadian poet/singer Leonard Cohen with a message to all those with hearts to hear and bear it:

Fridays Here See Ya Next Year

19 December 2025

Last post of 2025 from me Councillor Duncan, as Council Chambers has a well earned break until February. I think the newly elected will have had a taste now of the flavour of things to come, and given the challenges already being lined up I am reasonably confident a few are already wondering what they have let themselves in for. My urgent advice for the newly elects:

Try to get along with the others as best you can, but don’t compromise your reason for being there and if you are not sure of that quite yet then please contemplate over the break.

To be fair, it probably took me at least 12 months to figure out just what I was there for.

Yesterday 18 December we had the first Joint Management Agreement (JMA) workshop which you can watch here, and also the last Council meeting of 2025 on Tuesday 16 December which you can also watch here if you haven’t already (for the agenda see here). Tuesday was a fairly marathon session, and that wasn’t even counting the confidential items afterwards which took about another 90 minutes. A constituent came up to me afterwards saying it was the liveliest meeting he had watched in the past 12 months, and he has watched every single one – so that is certainly encouraging. Still a few teething problems with the video recording, but our good people are taking onboard the feedback and making the adjustments that they can. I will go through the issues of the week in a rough order of importance:

JMA Workshop or just a Public Relations Whizzbang? You tell me. I don’t think I really learned much about the JMA that I didn’t already know (and for what I do know you can read here), but the attending lawyer Paul Beverley was pleasant enough and at least we saved a few $$ by zooming him in instead of flying up from Wellington. But he hedged a few of the fielded questions alright, including the not trivial one of just what is mandatory and what is not, and the burning question of ‘how much is this really going to cost?’ we never managed to get to. I did hassle Paul about his on recorded statements that “Māori have a deep and innate relationship with natural resources” which to me implies that the rest of us do not, and I must say his response that it was ‘legislated and incontrovertible’ did catch me off guard – but he has offered to provide details and I am now awaiting his response. However what really strikes me about this whole JMA thing is that things are still so murky. I reckon it is about time we start referring to the Plain Language Act of 2022 which is designed exactly so that public agencies have to ‘improve the accessibility of certain documents that they make available to the public’. For one thing, I reckon we need a bunch of Case Studies so that people can better appreciate the real effects to the average person. Like what about Farmer Fred putting in a new paddock or septic tank, or Suburbanite Sarah living in the catchment area who wants to erect a new garage? To be continued in 2026…

MONEY, its a crime, share it fairly, but don’t take a slice of my pie: Item 5.9 from Tuesday – Allocation of Taupō District Council’s Governance Remuneration Pool (watch here from 1:34:36): This will probably have been one of our more awkward debates of the term, because on one level it is all about elected members squabbling over their salaries. The gist of it is that the Remuneration Authority gives this district a fixed pool of $569, 734 for the 2025-26 financial year, which minus the $159,517 set aside for the Mayor, is subject to agreement of elected members as to how the rest gets shared around. Back in 2022 I recall this happened as smooth as butter, but a few of us old hands from that time are wiser now and saw this matter as much more important than meets the eye. My suggestion for any of the more well to do elected members to donate their salaries to the kitty was not taken up.

My own commentary on this item was regarding the Deputy Mayors piece of the pie, because that is the only difference between the three options we were presented with. My contention was that the proposed Options A & B (1.68 and 1.6 times the base Councillor salary respectively) unfairly overstates the Deputy Mayors roles and responsibilities and understates the rest of us, so I advocated for Option C at 1.4 times the base Councillor salary of around $40K(you can read a transcript of what I said here) – which still represents a substantial premium of $14K above the 2022 figure. When it came to voting on the recommended Option B, four of us objected (Crs Campbell, Rankin, Greenslade & Woodward) – possibly not all for the same reasons as described below – and the motion was passed.

During this debate Turangi Councillor Sandra Greenslade expressed quite vociferous opposition to a proposed community engagement structure which could see the disbanding of the Tongariro Representative Group, and Mangakino Councillor Hope Woodward reiterated her concern with that same possibility for the Mangakino-Pouakani Representative Group as well (there were also two submitters during the public forum at the very beginning of the Tues meeting). What has this got to do with elected member remuneration, you may quite reasonably ask? Well it actually does affect salaries, because last term the Chairpersons of these committees did receive an additional $4k per annum for the additional responsibilities. Now there is a larger conversation still to be had as to the potentially revised format of these committees, because there is a feeling among staff and some Councillors that a less formal community engagement format could be more effective and less draining on staff resources. That discussion was originally intended to happen on Tuesday for leading into some community engagement during the month of January, but was scuppered after it was realised that elected members weren’t all on the same page about it.

So the cart seems to have got before the horse somewhat, and perhaps it would have been better to agree on salaries after this matter of community committees/forums got sorted out. The only opinion I have on this topic is regarding the Kinloch Representative Group which I have been involved with and reckon could do with some adjusting, and it also seems odd that no other community in the Taupo ward has an elected member and staff engagement committee except for them. Anyway it is probably quite healthy to bring attention to it now before any decisions get made early in the next year, and who am I to argue that early warning flags cannot influence the way things turn out?

However in the wider picture of things, there is not much doubt that elected members of this district who take their job to heart are quite underpaid for the good work that they do. With a base salary of just $40K and all the sweat and tears that can come with it, one really has to be a certain type to want to take it all on. And because I can be a bit of a numbers nerd at times, looking further afield I did make made quite an interesting discovery. It turns out that unless anything has drastically changed elsewhere, at a recently negotiated salary of $155,254 the Rotorua Deputy Mayor Sandra Kai Fong will be the second highest paid in the country, with only the Deputy Mayor of Super City Auckland getting paid more. So how on earth does little old Rotorua justify that? Good question. Maybe she has to fill in a lot for second term Mayor Tania Tapsell as she gallivants about the country promoting her district, or maybe its because Ms Kai Fong was a lawyer in her previous occupation and needs it to support her lifestyle?

Kinloch artistic opportunity or a blot on the landscape? Item 5.2 from Tuesday – Reclassification of Kinloch Reserve (watch here from 22:30): This is for the purpose of a new water reservoir to alleviate local water shortages in summer, and the item was passed unanimously. We did have several objectors, one via zoom who did submit quite a comprehensive objection on grounds that included visual amenity and loss of local habitat for wildlife. However this site was chosen by staff after some quite careful consideration, and we were unable to poke any holes in the logic behind its selection. I reckon it poses quite a good opportunity for local artwork if the Kinloch community so decide…

Political messaging in Council reports? Item 5.5 on Tuesday – My challenge to overt political messaging in Council documents (watch here from 1:04:12): The item was only relating to some new road names in the Kokomia subdivision to which nobody had any issue, but I used the opportunity to pop in a burning question which has been bothering me for quite some time. The following statement was first inserted into Council documents around the time of the 2021 Long Term Plan, and gets repeated in virtually every agenda item we get presented:.

A constituent recently challenged this terminology, and even passed on some feedback about it from Minister of Local Government Simon Watts. Diving into it a little deeper myself, it is quite apparent that the Local Government Act only mentions the Treaty of Waitangi and nothing about Te Tiriti, and there is certainly nothing about ‘partnerships‘ either. When I questioned this sort of thing a couple of years ago, the only response I received was: “go do some reading“. Well I can tell you that I have now done my reading, and it is fairly apparent to me that this is a form of political messaging which is every bit as misplaced as if we were repeatedly broadcasting Act Party slogans. I am a little curious how the language did get slipped in, but either way I will be requesting elected members to review – because to me the language implies a settled political position which does not reflect the full diversity of views within this Council or our wider community.

Don’t misbehave or else: Item 5.11 from Tuesday: My request for ALL workshops and committees to be audio-visual recorded during the term was quite well supported by other elected members (watch here from 1:51:46). This is not just for the purpose of tidy public record keeping, but also for the protection of those attending. I am aware of a few unsavoury incidents in the past 12 months involving both members of the public and elected members, and rather than just hearsay there deserves to be some measure of accountability which this could provide. In this day and age when all it takes is a phone and a tripod, there really is no excuse not to.

Apart from all that local stuff, just a few other things:

Can we do the same for Lake Taupo? Taranaki Lake Rotomanu is to be drained in an attempt for scientists to check it out after a gold clam infestation, but I don’t think that is an option here. Is it only a matter of time before a gold clam invasion eventuates? Because unless something is pointedly done to stop it happening, I can’t quite see it any other way.

Is the new Mayor of Napier misguided, or a bad boss, or what? Mayor Richard McGrath’s executive assistant has resigned, saying she can no longer work for him due to his “disregard for Treaty principles”. I wonder if she ever checked to see if that clause was in her employment contract?

See, bad things do happen: Voter fraud by theft of postal voting papers resulted in an electoral result for a Community Board being overturned in South Auckland. The numbers weren’t extraordinarily high, but the evidence that the fraud happened was apparently compelling. I am not sure how the instigator of the review made it happen, because when I made my own enquiries to simply affirm that the same was not happening in Taupo, our Electoral Officer told me to politely get stuffed and that he had legislated immunity to be able to do so. So next time around, I will be asking our Mayor to shop around for another electoral provider (they are a private enterprise) – and get a better contract.

Rates Capping coming in time to save us? Sort of, but not really. Government is allowing until 1 July 2029 for them to fully kick in, so until that happens I suppose that means that Councils like ours can continue to strip you naked with outrageous rate increases (perhaps we might get some slaps on the wrist though). However, an interesting question did pop up at a recent webinar with Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) – What about the Councils which have been diligent up until now (that is, if there are any), but are now requiring new infrastructure to cater for the growth they are now facing? Doesn’t that position them unfairly compared to the less disciplined Councils which already have their setting too high? The answer to that question according to DIA though, is that these are early days and that is a question for later down the track.

Not the panacea its made out to be: Recall that the Turangi Wastewater Plant is being lined up for a $20M land disposal solution instead of the current arrangement whereby the outflow goes back into Lake Taupo via wetlands? It turns out the land disposal option being currently used by Rotorua Lakes Council in Whakarewarewa Forest isn’t working out so well, and although the stated reasons in this article mention cultural I have heard from other sources it may also include nitrogen saturated soils. Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee is also saying this is being dealt with by yet another ‘secret unelected committee‘ – which I have gleaned are quite numerous over there.

Road cone hotline to close: The government instigated hotline to report road cone overuse is shutting down, as they are saying it has apparently served its purpose. However, Councils are not obliged to be fully compliant with the more reasonable and recently introduced NZTA guidelines until 1 July 2027, and I think we are still a long way from taking a good long hard look at things. If we added up how much this country spends on traffic management, I reckon we could well be into the 10’s of $M for every saved life or seriously injured road worker – because after all, that is the point of traffic management. Unless we discover a few more gold mines to plunder, things need to change.

$100B is a lot, isn’t it? Geoff Parker says the $100B Maori economy is a misnomer, and he makes a pretty good case I reckon with remarks such as: “The suggestion that New Zealand must treat Māori as ‘true partners’ in planning, investment, and infrastructure is a political claim disguised as an economic one”. I am certainly not the most financially literate person around, but I do know that book value is not equivalent to productivity or even prosperity – and what really is the ‘Maori economy’ anyway?

Reality check to climate scaredy-cats I didn’t attend myself, but I am sure this 105 min presentation at local Suncourt Hotel by visiting US scientist William Harper will have been very interesting. For others like me who missed it, you can watch it here.

Fridays fire up your imagination: Remember that the reason for the season isn’t somebody called Santa Claus, and please don’t disturb me when I’m writing up these:

Fridays Smokin’ Gun

12 Dec 2025

Councilor Duncan here again, and although it has got a little cooler outside in the last 24 hours it hasn’t much in Council Chambers. Less than one week to go before we break until February, I know Council stuff can get pretty tiresome and a lot of you are already tuning out with Christmas nearly upon us, but here it is anyway.

We have the last full Council Meeting at 1pm next Tuesday 16 December, and you can have a look at the agenda here. The only thing I have spotted of much interest is Item 5.9 being the approval of elected members salaries (and only the Mayors is a set number, the rest are subject to negotiation with the only limit being that the total must equal our mandated pool of $569,734) – because until we do that we won’t be getting any money in our bank accounts for the good work we do. But there are also a couple of other things happening next week which may be of interest.

The first is on Thurs Dec 18 from 10.30 am which is a 30 min presentation open to public viewing and being live recorded on the topic of the Joint Management Agreement (JMA). The presenter is one Paul Beverley, an experienced Treaty lawyer based in Wellington. I did a google research on Mr Beverley, and it seems that typical with this sort of thing, he is not exactly coming from a completely unbiased viewpoint as this article pointedly asserts (I have heard him described as just another lawyer on the Treaty gravy train).

I think one of the first things that needs to be established about this JMA, and which has previously been very muddied, is to establish what are the mandatory matters which Council has to sign up to, and what are the optional extras we don’t? On that point elected members were recently sent this very well put together two-page document from the Taupo Residents Group which makes some very reasonable assertions. However, my request to our Chief Executive to get a written response from Mr Beverley in advance of the meeting has been steadfastly refused, and it seems that flying him up from Wellington for what I suspect is intended as a 30 minute public relations exercise is more important instead. So my advice for this second round of the JMA saga going forward: Be prepared for more doses of spindoctoring. That way you won’t be disappointed, and can be pleasantly surprised if it goes any different.

Also on Thursday and immediately after the JMA session, elected members are having a workshop induction session on Procurement and Delegations (public excluded). This issue of elected members only getting cursory overview of significant financial and infrastructure decisions has been bugging me for a some time now (if any of you have noticed), and one of my 2025 campaign pledges to rectify is to take back control from staff via these Delegated Authorities (i.e. making elected members the signatory approvers of individual items). Because if we don’t get some more accountability of the spending to start happening, I see little hope in getting your rates bill down.

So I started to do a little research on how the current situation came to be, whereby the only real financial oversight we are granted is once a year during a rushed Annual or Long Term Plan exercise when there is never enough time to properly scrutinise even a fraction of the hundreds of line items run past our noses in the space of just a few weeks. And as it turns out, this current setting came about only not long before my inauguration in 2022! Because in item 4.9 of the Council meeting of 25 November 2021, the then elected members effectively handed financial oversight almost completely over to the Chief Executive! This is smoking gun evidence indeed, and if you find this hard to believe then I suggest you read the full item here. This was the adopted recommendation from 2021:

I must say they made it sound quite dandy that Council could be more efficient if staff have less paperwork justifying what they get up to, and only at the seemingly trivial expense of more comprehensive scrutiny by elected members. But the staff presented summary for that 2021 paper fairly well spells it out if you read between the lines, so I really cannot blame them:

So from that day onward the Chief Executive effectively gained almost complete control of expenditure, and now only has to check in with elected members if a line item exceeds $500K more than what was allocated for it in an Annual or Long Term Plan (and they can shuffle money around up to that figure, provided it does not exceed the total Council budgeted annual expenditure). Prior to November 2021, it looks as if any item over $500K was subject to at least some level of scrutiny by elected members because it required their official approval before it could happen, and although the Chief Executive had previously tried the same thing on in April 2018 (Item 5.14) elected members of that time only partially relented by increasing his spending limit from $250K to $500K).

I have also discovered that many Councils have what is called a Finance and Performance Committee, which means that any expenditure over a certain value and whether or not it is already approved on an Annual or Long Term Plan, must be run past that committee first (for example here is the Christchurch City Councils terms of reference document). But Taupo District Council has clearly headed in the completely opposite direction, with the concluding statement from November 2021 more or less stating that such scrutiny is an unnecessary burden:

“The suggested change increases organisational efficiency, makes efficient use of staff and Councillors’ time and enables the timely delivery of works”.

I say: What a load of complete codswallop. It is a simple fact of human nature that if you make people more directly responsible for something then you will get more scrutiny and accountability happening – and that applies to elected members just like anybody else. In my own professional area of traffic design, I have come across works which could have been done for a fraction of the price and be just as or nearly as effective. That alone gives me little confidence that unrestrained spending isn’t happening elsewhere, and speaking as an engineer/consultant/former Council staffer – I know there is little incentive in the machine of local government to do things cheaper or outside the square. Elected members need to get back in there and take back the reins from staff, and it simply has to happen if we are going see any meaningful reduction in unnecessary expenditure. So wish me luck next Thursday when this thing gets debated behind closed doors.

Apart from the above, I could only find a few of things worth mentioning:

Resource Management Act (RMA) getting scrapped: For all you need to know about the RMA reforms, this article from Crux is as good a guide as any. I don’t have any firm opinions on this, except as a practicing engineer who does dabble in consent applications from time to time, I must say it will make life a lot simpler when every Council doesn’t have its own bespoke District Plan to sift through like they do now. But Taupo District Councillor Wahine Murch also gives her fair enough summary here, and in particular how she perceives it might affect Tangata Whenua interests.

NZTA can do better: I attended the Waikato Regional Transport Committee Meeting in Hamilton on Monday where a few things got discussed including the revelation that improving State Highways only diminishes the competitiveness of rail freight, and next year we will be reviewing the six-year Regional Land Transport Plan (RTLP) – so this group might be able to help push local projects like improvements to the Turangi-Taupo SH1 connection if we can convince the other member Councils they will also benefit (which doesn’t seem a very easy thing to do). In the meantime, through our Regional Council rates we are all subsidising the Hamilton to Auckland rail commuter service to the effect of $30 per passenger every weekday that it operates (around a few hundred passengers a day for a 2.5hr trip each way).

But most substantially noticed was the unscheduled and unadvertised 50min complete stop for roadworks I experienced coming home in the late afternoon on SH1 just north of Oruanui Road. It seems to me that nowadays travelling on SH1 north of Taupo has become quite unpredictable in the roadworks summer seasons especially, and evidence is suggesting that more and more people are regularly settling on alternative routes on our local roads to avoid it.

The only people who can do anything about all this is NZTA because they control their works schedule, and even though they are are offering compensation to Councils for the damage these diversions cause to local road networks (exact figures were not mentioned), I think we as a Council could start considering Heavy Vehicle Restrictions on some of our local roads (relevant outside the times of complete SH1 closures). NZTA will also need to consider doing more of their works at night as happens like clockwork on the Auckland Motorways, and there is not much doubt that they need to vastly improve their communications to the public.

Motutere reverts back to before: Breaking news is that the 60 km/hr speed limit is going to be back at Motutere before Christmas as per this Herald report which includes a typo of 50 km/hr. I don’t think anybody is going to be very disappointed in that.

Financial debate of the century? Sounds like the mooted debate between Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Taxpayer Union’s ex-Finance Minister Ruth Richardson is getting tricky to arrange, but I do hope it goes ahead because it sounds as if it could be quite interesting.

Fridays nostalgic groove from a long way away and a long time ago:

Friday Summers Heating Up

5 December 2025

Councillor Duncan again with my view of things this Friday, and I must say that things are starting to get a little warmer and not just the weather. That old chestnut of controversy called ‘the JMA’ is now rearing its head, and a few other things like the Turangi Wastewater scheme and the Taupo Landfill were also recently discussed in Council Chambers that are stirring up thoughts in my own mind at least, of a few clues for this governments intent to smash up the Regional Councils. Whichever side of the fence you are on, there is no doubt that influences to some major infrastructure decisions are happening which have little to do with environmental science and everything to do with cultural preferences – and they don’t come for free. By the way these sessions were closed to public and not minuted either, so you will just have to get my version.

In the lighter side of things, it can at times feel like I am trying to defy gravity (again) with some of the stuff being presented in Chambers as the new Council takes shape. Like a little thing called ‘confidentiality’ for example, and I find myself explaining that we were not elected to be employees of Taupo District Council Inc, and so that means that floated ideas of weekly code of silence sessions are just not cricket. And the remuneration talks (still ongoing) remind that none of us are here for the money (around $40K for a Taupo District Council Councillor, unless you are the Deputy Mayor or chair one of the more important committees) – not unless you just want to be a tickboxing seat-warmer anyway.

And of course there was the governments announcement that rates caps of 2-4% (excluding water services) will soon be applied with a transition period until 2029 when the full model would be in place. I don’t exactly know what they were thinking to leave out the water services aspect, because although many Councils are behind their game and could do with catching up, places like Auckland can legitimately claim the same for transport (and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown is already squealing).

Anyway, lets get down to it:

Joint Management Agreement (JMA) number is coming up: Some of you may have heard by now that Council is having an open to the public workshop on 18 December in Council Chambers (open for the public to watch but not participate). This is the first in a series of workshops planned, and the idea is to do them in a way that avoids the accusations of back door dealings which happened in July. I don’t know why we aren’t leaving all of this until next year, but this first session is apparently intended as a basic introduction to just what these JMA’s are all about and how they came to be. I have heard some musings that given the current make-up of elected members, the Waikato Rivers JMA could be passed in its current form straight away and that all of this talk (let alone public consultation) is a waste of time. That may possibly be correct, but I think for newly elects to vote for something as substantial as this before being briefed would be highly irresponsible, and would likely tear apart any semblance of a constructive way forward not to mention lose credibility with the public. I did also come across the below mention of it in a recent Hobsons Pledge newsletter, so it seems that the eyes of the rest of the country are also upon us.

$20M better spent elsewhere? On Tuesday elected members had a workshop introduction to the proposed wastewater solution for Turangi, which has been subject to investigations and negotiations for at least 8 years (!). Some info is available on the Council website here, but I must say it hasn’t ever been portrayed as straightforwardly as it could be. The consent has been expired since 2017, and the aim is to get a new one signed off by the Regional Council to carry us through far into the future. But that application process has been put on hold until we can sort out ourselves to decide what we really want to happen, and therein lies the uncertainty.

There are undoubtedly some historical grievances from both the original land acquisition and the resulting outflow directly into Lake Taupo (and realise that without a wastewater plant, we couldn’t have the town of Turangi), but the plant has been developed to such a degree with the latest technology that its output is apparently not far off from being drinkable. With the existing wetlands and its proposed expansion scheduled to happen in a few years time, its environmental effects are arguably quite minimal in real and relative terms. For example, the diagram below demonstrates its Nitrogen effect as relative to other polluters (and Nitrogen is one of the key measures).

But the negotiations of Council staff continue – and there is no scheduled date for them to ever finish – to find a ‘long term’ land disposal option, and to date the only thing that has been holding up that happening seems to be the inability to find a willing landowner and for the right price. Just to be clear, this land disposal option is primarily being sought for cultural reasons, and would cost in the order of $20M for infrastructure alone (plus operating costs which may be in the $00,000’s annually). A glimpse of the amount of work that has gone into this is shown in the diagram below, which illustrates all the different options that have been investigated to date.

Now I don’t wish to offend the locals who have been so impacted by all of this over its history, but now is surely the time to step back and think about what is really trying to be achieved here and that we are all going to end up paying for it. I can think of a lot more productive ways to spend $20M, can’t you?

Taupos rubbish on trial : Yesterday we had a staff presented session on the Taupo landfill, which has also of late been a topic of discussion at a few local marae. The current consent expires in 2027 (when basically the hole will be full), and we need to get Stage 3 ticked off by the Regional Council to carry us through to 2058. As far as I can tell there are few if any environmental reasons the consent couldn’t get rolled over, and there are no disputes about land ownership as with the Turangi Wastewater plant because it was never subject to acquisition under the Public Works Act. But many local hapu are understandably not very happy about having a rubbish tip at the bottom of their precious Mount Tauhara, and that seems to be presenting a bit of a conundrum.

You see things seem to have been left a little too late in the piece to seriously consider other options like a different landfill location (and which is unlikely to be economically viable anyway) or alternative measures like incineration (which is very expensive). Apparently it can take up ten years to get a new site consented and up and running, so if it were truly ever a serious consideration then the ball on that should have got rolling long ago. The simple fact is that if this consent doesn’t get granted by 2027, we will need to start trucking household refuse to a place like Hampton Downs at an estimated additional annual cost of $270 per ratepayer. I don’t know how significantly the Regional Council takes cultural opposition in their consent calculations, but gather it will be diminished with the newly proposed government reforms – so to me, this whole exercise is seeming more about politics than anything else. In the meantime though, we will definitely be spending on a redevelopment of the existing site as shown below which will enable trucks to get their disgorged contents sorted instead of tipping straight into the hole as happens now – and is also a necessary if we need to start trucking it out.

Jonesie Awards coming up: Anybody not familiar with these, you can check them out here. Basically they are an annual awards ceremony headed by the Taxpayers Union to un-celebrate examples of wasteful spending by government agencies. Last years first place winner in the local government category was Hasting District Council which put a bunch of unelected teenagers in charge of Council for a time as a novel PR exercise. If anybody has some nominations for around here you are welcome to submit, I even have one in mind myself.

Chemtrails all hot air? This is not a topic I am very knowledgeable about at all, but I was sent this 97 minute documentary to enlighten and recommend it as worth a watch to bring yourself up to speed. I cannot confirm if any of it is true, but cloud seeding to influence the weather has been attempted since the 1940’s, and it is not very hard at all to imagine the same sort of thing being tried again to address global warming. However the question really is: Would those in authority really do this without our consent or even knowledge, as is being asserted here?

Only a few bad eggs, yeah right: It looks like the scandal involving the former top dogs of NZ Police Andrew Coster and Jevon McSkimming is already being subject to a thorough whitewashing, with the current Police Commissioner and Minister of Police trying to portray a black and white situation that it was only those two who ever did anything wrong, and Minister of Police Mark Mitchell ridiculously saying “If you’re asking me to condemn our 15,000 police officers – sworn and non-sworn staff – around the country, and judge them by the same standards of that previous police executive, I am not going to do that”. But I am hoping that the average New Zealander has a little more common sense than to swallow this nonsense, and that anyone should be able to see that if you get corrupt and calculating practices at the very top, then it is inevitable that the same behaviours could have been trickling down for quite some time.

What has this got to do with local government? Well I have said it before and I will say it again: New Zealand is not the bastion of un-corruption it claims to be. I am not saying that I know of any practices as blatant as that of convicted senior manager Murray Noone of Rodney District Council / Auckland Transport going on around here (whose renown was such that I hear every man and his dog contractor in North Auckland knew the only way to get contracts with Murray was through bribery), but I certainly perceive similar patterns of institutional self-protectionism as been exposed in the NZ Police, including the withholding of information on a need to know basis only.  Clearly this is being illuminated as not being a very healthy approach for the NZ Police, and it should have no place in Councils either. But it certainly does happen.

Ever heard of UNDRIP? Otherwise known as United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. If you want to come up to speed with one of the reasons this country has been headed the direction is has, this article by Dr Muriel Newman of NZPCR is quite informative. Whether you agree with the authors perspective or not, there is no doubt that when New Zealand was signed up to it in 2010 it happened in quite a surreptitious way. I had never been a great fan of former Prime Minister Helen Clark, but at least she saw what might be coming in a way that the fairly clueless succeeding Prime Minister John Key did not.

Beautiful roundabouts: I haven’t driven them more than a few times, but as a roundabout fan must acknowledge the new ones on Taharepa Road / A C Baths Ave and Taherepa Road / Crown Road. However, I do have a grumble about the cost required to make these happen, because in a small town like this we should be aiming for good-enough infrastructure and not the rolls-royce. We have a Chambers workshop coming up on December 18th to discuss Delegated Authorities, and it is exactly decisions like this I want to get in the hands of elected members and not just leave to the discretion of staff – because any engineer worth their salt will always prefer to build the rolls-royce.

Waterslide fun for summer: Anyone recall the waterslides we had several years ago in the Riverside Park (where the summer concert is held)? Well this year they are happening in Ngongotaha north of Rotorua, and I will be making enquiries with the operators if they might consider coming back to Taupo because I thought they were great fun.

Fridays fable to figure: I recently came across this extraordinary 13min short film entitled ‘Lost Face’ about the fate of a fur trader at the hands of a far northern American Indian tribe. Wouldn’t it be great if some New Zealand filmmakers could make something as gritty about our own colonial experiences?