Tag: new-zealand

Fridays Council Blood and Guts

10 July 2026

So says the Prophet Isaiah to the exiled Israelites in Babylon in Isaiah 43:19 which is relevant to anybody who seeks a new beginning (makes me think of the Council mayhem now):

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland”.

Some Councils have it simple like Hamilton & Waikato, they have few neighbours and their options are relatively few. Some like in the Wairarapa have even been talking about it for over a decade. Here in Taupo on the other hand, we are in the middle of eight neighbours (or is it nine?) with it never having come up before, yet in a total of just three months we are being asked to drop everything and come up with something new. Mission fairly impossible it has seemed to me from the very beginning, because not only have we got to decide but also to co-ordinate with our budding partners. For example South Waikato is putting out the option on left which includes Taupo but doesn’t match with any of our own options – however they didn’t bother asking us first (it is still a viable option, and I note they haven’t included the Backstop option as we have). Contrast that approach with Waikato and Hamilton City Councils which are more or less proposing the same. That doesn’t mean this process is impossible for us – in fact I think it presents quite an opportunity for positive change – but there is a distinct possibility we could get to the due date of 9 August with absolutely nothing to show for it. That’s not my preferred outcome and I will be somewhat disappointed if we end that way, but I’m just giving you the heads up. By the way, intrepid local reporter Bronson Perich wrote up a tidy article last week following our 30 June meeting to decide options, which you can read HERE.

The Labour party have finally come out and apparently said at a recent Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) committee meeting, that they are not advocating for any forced amalgamation of Councils. What that means if elected into power this October is anybody’s guess because they are of course politicians, so that’s not really news to speak of. But I have heard the Head Start process of amalgamation described as akin to taking a sledgehammer to fix a nut sized problem. I think we aren’t really the nut being targeted anyway because it was always more about the Regional Councils, but we still have in the form of Taupo District Council a pretty big nut that could do with cracking.

On that note there was a very good report just released on 30 June by the NZ Initiative entitled “Head Start Done Right” which you can read HERE and listen to the podcast about it HERE . This is a must read for anybody interested in local government, and a real slap on the wrist to the way this government is going about things. I think one of their statements is quite perceptive: “The core argument is that New Zealand does not have a local government problem. It has a centralisation problem, and the standard reform response, fewer councils with narrower functions, has been making the underlying disease worse. The Head Start pathway sits in that tradition. Unless the architecture is designed deliberately, the pathway will produce larger councils with the same problems but on a larger scale”. The report instead advocates for an alternative principle of subsidiarity, which is basically that any function gets exercised at the lowest tier of government capable of carrying it out i.e. local decisions made locally, which seems to be what most people are worried about. This is practised far more effectively in places like Switzerland and Germany, and New Zealand seems to be headed the opposite way. I don’t disagree with much anything stated in this report, but I still see this Head Start process as a way of designing it in, even if we get to become part of a Council much bigger. This is an opportunity for change, and I believe it can be done.

So how do we do a better Head Start for Taupo?

On Tuesday we had a very interesting presentation from Waikato Regional Council (WRC) where they also presented a suggested version for a Super Unitary Council which matches the Taupo District Council Option A.

The decision for which option to proceed will be made on 21 July, and at present there is little enthusiasm in Chambers for Option A. The main perception is a loss of local representation, however I for one quite like the sound of it. It’s not the Auckland Council version WRC have in mind, quite different actually. But only if we get strong local boards (or wards as WRC refers them) with decent financial delegations and ring-fenced whatnot. You can watch the full one hour presentation HERE, and for the WRC Unitary model watch from the 35:30 mark.

As I see it the main potential benefits of being part of a much larger entity are:

(1) Increased professionalism – because we simply don’t get enough of that in a provincial Council like ours; and

(2) A bigger voice to Wellington – because size really does matter in that regard and Supercity Auckland is an example of that.

It feels strange for me to be advocating for this because the reason I left Auckland 10 years ago was to escape the Supercity Council, but there you are and I have also worked out that Waipa District Council are favouring it too. This is an opportunity of a generation to make Council better and we want to get it right, so is this the best path forward? I believe it really could be, if its done right.

Below is the WRC suggested model. Basically we would get lumped in the Southern Local Area (SLA) along with Waipa, Otorohunga and Waitomo, where Taupo would get 4 out of 12 Councillors deciding what happens for our part of the district. Bigger decisions affecting the entire Unitary would be made at the Council wide level where our SLA interests would be represented by 2 Councillors out of 8. I did also ask the question about a single entity like TDC becoming its own Unitary Council which Rotorua already flagging it may want to go down that path – and the answer was it could be costly. As an aside if you want an example of the things a Unitary Council gets up to, this interview on the Platform with the Mayor of Gisborne gives a clue.

Ok so what else in the news?

Dinosaur expectations: For a read about last weeks Annual Plan rates hike you can again refer to this Lake FM article well written up by Bronson Perich. I think Mayor John Funnell is somewhat missing the point with this statement: “However, the unpalatable truth is that it can’t be brought down further without deferring or cancelling essential work that we’re committed to delivering”. The fact is that the word “essential” is quite a subjective term in local government, and is about as subjective as the food you’ll decide for dinner.

Mangakino Pouakani connects marae style: there was a representative group meeting yesterday at Mokai Marae which you can watch HERE and read the agenda HERE. It was convivial enough and the kai was good too, and being on a marae you can be assured that the committee meeting comprised much less than half the time of what we got up to.

Engagement costs you: On that note, a little while ago I submitted the following LGOIMA question to Council which you may be interested in: Can you please give me a breakdown of what the $0.5M set aside in the 2024 LTP for Iwi engagement was spent on 2024/25 and 2025/26 to date? You can read the full response HERE

Emissions cost you too: On that note again, the Minister of Climate Change Simon Watts has said that he wants councils to make climate-related decisions that are “proportionate, evidence-based, and represent value for money.”( read the news article here) . Given that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published the next generation of climate scenarios which eliminate the most extreme scenarios that have dominated climate research over much of the past several decades – so I guess that means we will soon be reconsidering the need for a new $3M gas flare for Taupo landfill?

Fridays musical pot at diversity in the UK, and I am assured the fight is very real over there:

Fridays Fabulous France

3 July 2026

The last stanza of Rudyard Kipling’s “If“:

We plod on, we do plod on, in this beast called local government. Sometimes I really wonder how I ever got entangled. A big reason I chose to become self employed ten years ago was to escape the office politics, so why on earth did I choose to do this? Although no human endeavour is ever completely pure of self-serving interest and gaslighting excuses, I have never encountered it on such a grand scale before. I have found it pays to remind myself that anytime in Council should feel an alien experience where normal forms of human encounter do not apply, because the day it doesn’t is the day you have succumbed. Anyway below is how it all went down, and just as well we have the football.

Amalgamation fumblegation: On Tuesday we had our first Council meeting where we discussed the Head Start pathway which you can watch HERE and read the agenda HERE. Just an hour before, we were introduced in the backroom to some spreadsheet analysis our financial manager Sarah Matthews has undertaken and only now shared. We were told that we would receive some comparative analysis by early June or around a full month ago, but this was the first we have been presented with and only minutes before the debate. The spreadsheet contains information that is publicly available and apparently took some time to prepare, and is being held by Mayor John Funnell as so crucially important towards future negotiations that it needs to be kept secret. My own point of view about that is somewhat different: that it contains many assumptions and its comprehension in layperson terms is definitely questionable. For example there is a dubious assumption that larger entities will be more efficient, and a fairly obvious lesson that it may be unwise to shackle oneself with others already heavily in debt. But I say that irrespective of all that, the ringfencing of debt and the TEL fund are still valid bargaining chips – otherwise is it fair for Taupo ratepayers to pay for Hamiltons rapid development? This Head Start process is a large piece of work being required very quickly, and I think it is wrong to be backroom manhandling – but that is how Mayor John Funnell wants to play the ball. The only reason I am not publishing the secret spreadsheet for your viewing anyway, is that I don’t think its important enough to cause even more friction in Chambers than there is already. Ugh, is it living in a small town?…

So one thing I am really quite wary of with any amalgamation is that the small town small mind predilections of Taupo District Council will be magnified even larger (e.g Option 3), and that is one positive thing in favour of say hitching with a city like Hamilton. In hindsight, instead of staff I think we should probably have engaged a consultant for a more objective point of view like Wairarapa Councils did (although to be fair, they have been talking about amalgamation for over a decade). I asked AI to compare with some other Councils Head Start progress with the output shown below… you get the picture.

One thing I did attempt to highlight in that Tuesday meeting is that the Backstop Option D to stay independent is still a very practicable option, and we could become our own Unitary Authority like Rotorua is apparently considering (there are many more options than just four, but these are what was narrowed down to). I say that unless the Local Government Act gets changed, constituents of the Taupo district still have much protection to just being swept away in something ill-defined and un-consulted. The only public consultation undertaken for this very significant decision has so far been rushed and bereft of useful information – in other words it was not “meaningful”, and that has significant legal implications as this Simpson Grierson advice does point out. So we could probably stay put until 2031 in the meantime which anything could happen – but do we really want for that?

While we are on the topic of comparisons, the above secret financial analysis by Council staff is all very well – but what about condition of the infrastructure? Because although financial modelling does help assess the affordability of various arrangements, infrastructure due diligence helps identify the condition and future obligations of the assets that would be inherited under those options – so both perspectives are important to informed decision making. I put a few hours into this question in the past few days and using AI managed to prepare this quite comprehensive summary of all our potential Council partners. What do you think? I have not verified each and every source, but it is looking very useful to me and I will be asking for staff to carry it on.            

NOTE: This assessment is a desktop review of publicly available information relating to the infrastructure assets and asset management practices of councils included in the Head Start structural reform scenarios. Sources include Long-Term Plans, Infrastructure Strategies, Asset Management Plans, Annual Reports, and other publicly available technical documents. The assessment is intended to complement the Head Start financial modelling by providing a comparative overview of infrastructure condition, future renewal risk, and asset management capability. It is not a detailed engineering audit and does not rely on internal asset management databases, condition survey data, or other non-public information.This document was prepared with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to support document review, comparison, drafting and presentation. All findings should be independently reviewed and validated against primary source documents before being relied upon for policy, financial or engineering decisions.

Anyway on the basis of the above effort, I should be expecting some plaudits from the Mayor don’t you think?

Okay in other news less depressing but only just:

Didn’t you vote for something different? We also had a Council meeting Tuesday later that day where the Annual Plan got approved with my own and Councillor Hope Woodward’s voiced disapproval (you can watch HERE and read the agenda HERE). My concern is not so much the final number of 6.6% which is just 0.1% less than the orginal forecast, but how we arrived at it. This Council is simply not exercising sufficient oversight of its own expenditure. We rely too heavily on staff to identify savings, rather than elected members being given proper opportunity to scrutinise spending and explore different ways of doing things. That is reflected in the excessive financial delegations given to the Chief Executive in 2022 (watch my previous video on that topic HERE), a culture that too often treats operational matters as being outside the governance role, and the frequent refusal of information requests from individual elected members. In my view, governance is about setting direction, holding the organisation to account, and ensuring value for money for our ratepayers. We are not doing enough of that, and for that reason I did not support this Annual Plan nor the last three I have voted against. Before asking our community to pay more, I believe we have a duty to demonstrate that every reasonable opportunity to reduce costs has been rigorously explored, and that goes for everything from pedestrian islands to multi-million dollar gas flares for a landfill. We do not meet that standard by a very long shot.

Screaming from the hilltops: On that note we also had a Long Term Plan (LTP) workshop which you can watch HERE, and I voiced some frustrations including that staff are given carte blanche licence to present their own subjective viewpoints with Elected Members wishing to say anything contrary getting 5 minutes only (even members of the public get more latitude in a public forum). But I have to acknowledge Councillor Rachel Cameron’s filling in for the Deputy Mayor’s absence to present a pleasant facade of responsible governance leadership.

Taupo Airport goes live: Thanks to my request the Taupo Airport Authority (TAA) Committee meetings are now going live, with its first from Monday gone which you can watch HERE and read the agenda HERE. The most notable thing mentioned was the uncertain state of the airport runway which could require a lot of $M’s to repair and which even garnered a Waikato Times article about it. We are still awaiting further findings about it, so watch this space.

Taupo connects but only just: We had a Taupo ward Councillor Connect forum on Wednesday night at Waitahanui Community Hall which you can watch HERE if you’re keen, but only about six people turned up and the topics discussed weren’t too mind bending. What is it about smaller communities like Mangakino that get more people interested in things like this?

Middle of the pack nothing to be proud of: The Taxpayer’s Union Rates Dashboard 2026 is now out where you can see for yourself how Taupo stacks up against the rest. We aren’t the worst by a long shot but certainly not anywhere near the best.

Un-natural justice: Last week or so Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee gave a comprehensive breakdown of the Code of Conduct (CoC) process of Elected Members as evidenced by South Waikato District Councils abhorrent $34K persecution of Councillor Zed Latinovic for a raft of negligible so-called offences. You can watch HERE for Cr Lee’s lengthy presentation to a packed community meeting. Fun facts: Investigators are paid by Council so that means by definition they are far from independent, and CoC’s weren’t a thing until 1998. Imagine being in a courtroom where the prosecuting lawyer has unlimited resources and is also the defacto judge, with your own defence being limited to just 15 minutes and without a lawyer unless you pay yourself – and you will get a feel for Zed. In other words: the CoC process gives official licence to ratepayer funded hit-jobs on Elected Members the Mayor doesn’t like, and it deserves to be scrapped.

Bird flu coming near you: Yes its true Council are preparing and I’ve even heard them talk about it, watch HERE if you want to know more about it.

Since its World Cup: For one of the most politically incorrect and hilarious football diatribes of all time by a disappointed Iraqi supporter watch HERE

Fridays French fabulous of the week:

Fridays Tail Wagging the Dog

26 June 2026

Bishop Desmond Tutu who received much venom speaking truth to power and was instrumental in saving South Africa from descending into bloodshed at the end of Apartheid era: “When people say that religion and politics don’t mix, I wonder which Bible it is they are reading”.

Hi people this week we didn’t have too much going on except that on Tuesday morning your Elected Members at Taupo District Council had a round table discussion about Amalgamation! Yes that’s right, although the government announcement was made way back on 5 May this was the first time we have actually got together for a few hours and mooted our own points of view – and next week Tuesday 30 June at 10.30am in Council Chambers there is an Extraordinary Council meeting (public can attend and is being live recorded) where we decide the way forward on the Headstart proposal due 9 August. We have only just received the agenda yesterday and I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but you can have a look yourself HERE and it includes a summary of the public survey results.

And what can I reveal from our unrecorded meeting on Tuesday? I expressed some dissatisfaction with the general way this is being handled, including about the open-ended public survey with no safeguards from mischievous intent. I also stated that amalgamating with a much larger entity than ourselves should at least lift the bar with regard to professionalism that this Council sorely lacks. I am no big fan of supercity sized bureaucracies like Auckland, but little old Taupo District Council has given me powerful reason to believe bigger can sometimes be better in so many ways. After all, the citizens of Auckland were up in arms about their historically high 7.9% rates increase for which Mayor Wayne Brown is receiving a lot of flack – yet Taupo doesn’t have all the significant infrastructure challenges of a city, and we have been tracking that way for years! We simply have no excuse for not doing better, and its YOUR FAULT for not holding those you elect more fully to account. On a side note to that, last week or so I attended a very interesting LGNZ Zoom discussion with the CEO of Auckland Council and an Auckland Councillor for Franklin ward, and a point of view was put across that the new community boards after 2010 were actually more effective at community representation than the old Councils before the amalgamation (I did ask, but unfortunately this interview cannot be shared). Other things to note from the Tuesday meeting: (i) there was little expressed enthusiasm for buddying up with Rotorua, which was interesting; and (ii) some senior staff clearly want to keep their jobs in Taupo. Perhaps the motives are altruistic, but with senior staff comments like (my paraphrasing): “..a lot of people are employed by Council, and if they get relocated to Hamilton that would mean a loss to the local economy and social cohesion”, you get my drift…

By the way, to date your Elected Members haven’t received any comparative data on the performance of our surrounding councils, so we are very much having to do our own homework on this (luckily we have the Taxpayer’s Union report which the Council financial manager is scathing of but has yet to provide any figures to dispute). If I were a betting man and knowing as I do that in my time virtually every major decision in this Council has been stage managed or manipulated by staff to some degree – my money would be on us ending up with anything other than Option A.

If I were really going to conspiracy theorise, would go so far to speculate that some staff could even be subtly attempting to derail the entire process (“because its all just too hard…”) so that we end up in the fallback position of Option D which is the Backstop option to sit tight and do nothing until 2031 – if that ends up being the case, we coulda saved a whole lot of time and hassle already… Anyway the meeting next Tuesday is intended to set the direction forward so should be worth tuning in, noting that these options have literally been prepared just days ago and whatever we decide is probably irrelevant if our proposed amalgamation partners aren’t on board. This is why I reckon that Mayors and CE’s should be keeping in constant communication and we have received some placatory responses that they are – but I suspect they aren’t.

Other stuff in the news?

Ground control to Major Tom: Yesterday there was a closed workshop session of the Chief Executive (CE) Review Committee of which only a handful of Elected Members take part (many other places involve full Council on these committees, but not here). Nothing earth shattering to report other than some subtle rejigs of CE Julie Gardyne’s Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) which as far as I can tell will not much affect ratepayer affordability, and the suggestion to introduce a KPI for the reduction of operational expenditure (e.g. by X%) as done some other places nobody was interested in. But I did have to gasp that even after repeating my dissatisfaction with the current Delegated Authority regime which does not require proper scrutiny of major financial decisions to happen, a few members of that committee were expressing that Taupo District Council is a standout model of prudent financial management! The rest of us on Planet Earth do simply not believe that!

The vote that changes Council? Next Tuesday 30 June there is also a full Council meeting at 1pm (as always you can read the agenda HERE) where I have submitted a Notice of Motion (NoM) Item 5.3 to amend the staff report template, but I am not expecting anything too momentous. I have worked out that presentation is just if not more important as the motion, and elected members have egos as fragile as eggshells to vote against anything if they are disturbed. It is based on a NoM sent to me by Far North Councillor Davina Smolders but tailored to a local flavour, and is intended to allow for more informed and transparent decision making e.g. options considered, opportunity cost, author qualifications etc. I think it will take more than just this NoM to turn this Council around but it is a start, and it will be interesting to hear the arguments against. As an aside, Davina tells me that up north they have Council meetings in fluent Te Reo for hours on end with English interpreters. Gaps in the conversation are strongly suspected to indicate when abuse is being hurled your way – fascinating!

Encouraging signs: Hamilton City Council is signalling a new way forward which includes $9.7 million of Development Contributions ringfenced to pay off debt, and an improvement of $20 million in net external debt compared to the draft plan presented in April. Well done Hamilton, even though you are a big bad city perhaps you would be a good influence to partner up with after all.

Golfer speaks out: On vaccine injury of course, with Michael Campbell talking about his own ordeal. And why is it that sports personalities have so much stock with Kiwi’s?

Were you there for Winter Solstice? Stonehenge Wharewaka was apparently the place to be, I wasn’t early enough in the morning this year but came across the witchy crystal ladies once. If you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, you can read about it HERE

Fridays first reel by Duncan with Aunty Ann:

Fridays Roundup Galore

29 May 2026

However weird churches can be and however flawed its participants, Christians are not meant to live in a cave. Hebrews 10:24-25: “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching”.

So people about the great amalgamation, where are we with that? Next week or so this Council will be asking for your feedback, just like some other Councils like Western Bays are currently doing. At least Western Bays have narrowed it down to just five options, but Taupo which is in the middle of no fewer than eight other Councils – none of which we have ever seriously entertained the thought of working more closely with – is not so lucky. And yes, as Epitome of Coolness has been pondering in her recent article, Chatham Islands has even been floated. But given that the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) has previously mentioned to us that transport and water catchments are key factors of consideration, I am not sure we will get very far with that as an idea (and DIA are the ones who receive these Head Start proposals due 9 August and make their recommendations to the Minister). Transport is far more relevant to those bordering cities because not much point in one side of the border building a four-lane expressway if the other won’t budge, so given that we have a lake which feeds to about a third of the nations population, my estimation is that the gravitas will inexorably be northwards towards the rest of the Waikato, perhaps as far as Hamilton.

Checking out the Taxpayers Union page of Waikato Councils, Taupo isn’t looking like such a desirable partner if debt per household is a factor of consideration, with only Rotorua and Hamilton looking a lot worse … and what’s up with Waipa? Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell seems to be suggesting in her recent docial media post the option of an alliance from Taupo to Maketu based on awa and Iwi makeup, and in a Rotorua meeting reported in local media the DIA’s Future of Local Government deputy executive director, Sarah Polaschek, apparently said that “proposals could proceed even without full agreement from all participating councils, provided they meet required thresholds based on population or majority support” – we have received no mention of any population threshold before, so I wonder what that number is? I wonder if the likes of smaller population Otorohunga and Waitomo know about it, because they are already making statements about their proposed merger.

Further north, there is a movement called Northern Action Group Inc which is petitioning for Rodney ward to secede from the supercity Auckland Council union and instead buddy up with rural Kaipara, you can read more in detail about it HERE if you like (I am not sure if this is going to be submitted as part of any official Head Start proposal). Their motto which the likes of Taupo should probably bear in mind if we are going to contemplate going the Hamilton way: PLUNDERED FOR OUR RATES AND RESOURCES! A FREE PLAYGROUND FOR HOLIDAYING AUCKLANDERS! A BACKYARD FOR AUCKLAND’S RUBBISH! URBAN MINDSET BUREAUCRATS AND PLANNERS! OUT OF CONTROL CCOs!

I also managed to have a chat with Ken Turner who is one of the 20 Auckland Councillors who recently opposed (unsuccessfully) to fend off Auckland Mayor Wayne Browns bid for a 7.9% rates increase which is apparently the highest in Supercity history. Apart from his interesting anecdotes about the dictatorial running of Wayne’s 30-odd staffed Mayoral office (the complete opposite of how it works here, but it sounds like a compelling idea) and that 90% of debating time gets devoted to the Auckland CBD, he tells me that although the 21 Community Boards get allocated a seemingly healthy annual budget of some $300M, less than 10 percent is actually able to be discretionarily spent with the rest set in stone for various contracts or another. So the Auckland model for local representation is looking a little shaky in my mind right now, although Ken did assure me that good attention to the nuts and bolts of the thing could make the difference with ringfenced budgets and proper accountabilities (Ken is a mechanic by trade and doesn’t shirk from looking under the hood) – so once we start getting into the detail, he could be a useful person to call.

Okay so that is the big question for now dealt with, what else is going on?

Actually quite important: There is a new bill before parliament right now to try and lessen the power and influence of Chief Executives in local government and increase that of Elected Members. It is MP Stuart Smith’s idea, and it sounds a very good one to me. You can check out the new Bill HERE and watch a Platform interview with the Minister HERE. It reads as most legalese does so quite convoluted, but my hope is for it to make a good difference.

Transparency but only when convenient: We had an open to the public workshop yesterday entitled “Ratings decisions for Annual Plan” which you can watch HERE on youtube. I did not appear in person only online, and viewed the workshop as an exercise in justification which I didn’t have the energy to disrupt. There was a proposal near the beginning which you can watch from HERE about increasing the Uniform Annual General Charge (UAGC) from the current $250 to $425, which will adversely affect residential ratepayers in favour of commercial and all under the banner of “fairness” – so if you are a commercial ratepayer you will be among the happiest. Apart from that: all the excuses in the world as to why we can’t trim the forecast rates increase any less than 6.6% (only 0.1% below the forecast of the previous Long Term Plan (LTP)), and yet somehow other Councils like Wellington manage to do it after consulting with their constituents first. We aren’t even a city with all their infrastructure demands, or a Thames-Coromandel which loses a few bridges every storm, so I find there to be little excuse. Councillor Hope Woodward was asking when Elected Members get to go through the budgets line by line, but the response was basically that we wouldn’t. I couldn’t be bothered repeating about lack of financial accountability and the need for significant financial decisions to be brought before Elected Members for individual evaluation throughout the year rather than once every 12 months at Annual or Long-Term Plan time. So I guess this will be yet another Annual Plan I will be voting the negative to (yawn).

Parks and kindy’s and playful things: We did have a Council meeting on Tuesday where a couple of interesting items did get discussed. You can watch the whole near three hours if you really want HERE with the agendas available HERE, but you have to be quite special to want to do that (I am telling you and another Councillor agrees, if it were last term the meeting would have been done and dusted in under 45 min). Kinloch parents of young children will be happy that the deal for Council to contribute around $0.5M of Development Contributions (DC’s) towards the new kindergarten and reserve proposal by Kinloch Families Trust in Item 5.3 was passed unanimously (you can watch from HERE). I say this is a healthy model for future community partnerships, even though there are some local naysayers around the issue of “opportunity cost” i.e. that the money could have been spent elsewhere.

There was also Item 5.4 Taupo District Wide Reserves Management Plans, which some of you will recall from last week I was questioning the wisdom of proceeding due to the cost and trouble and looming amalgamation. You can watch the proceedings from HERE, including my fair disgust that instead of this item being presented as a decision to proceed or not was just a delegating of the task to the Regulatory Committee. My question about cost was answered that it would involve staff time of around 1.5 FTE (so lets call it around $200K), but that does not include all the time and effort required by everybody else – and these do take 12 – 18 months to get through. My other objections were around: (i) the subjective nature of these being deemed “outdated” just because some are over 20 years old, when the requirement is to keep them continually updated (which really means any Reserve Management plan is outdated the day after it is published); (ii) my once bitten twice shy experience with Motutere, which in my mind was a decision very much influenced by outside minority interest groups and a pre-determined agenda within Council; and (iii) the amalgamation question which means that after 2028 a new Council organisation will probably attempt a revamp in its own mold. So talk about unnecessary, and I am not convinced there are not ulterior motives at play once again – so my recommendation is that you had better watch this space carefully, and yes, the motion was by majority passed.

Oh yes, and there was Item 5.2 which was a Notice of Motion by myself to Acknowledge Standing Orders which you can read below and watch from HERE. It was really an attempt to try and bring about some order in Chambers and reiterate why we are all here, so it never ceases to amaze me that something as benign as this could only receive partial support (Point 1 was rejected, Points 2-6 supported but only by majority). My conclusion: You can table a motion to acknowledge that grass is really green, but unless the egos around the table get sufficiently stroked then it will not get the nod. My Notice of Motion:

Bed tax for Taupo? We had a very interesting submission by Scott Mead who did a 5 min presentation during Tuesdays Public Forum including slides for a form of proposed Bed Tax through rates which you can watch from HERE. He included some info of what other Councils like Wellington and Queenstown are doing, and based on Scott’s calcs we could generate around $2.8M of additional income. Conceivably this could be put towards relieving residential property rates by around 3.4%, or any other purpose Council might come up with. Great presentation Scott, and I for one am keen on following it up.

Where have all the Councillor Koreros gone? Been wondering why messages from Elected Members haven’t been included in the Taupo & Turangi News inserts since election? The plain and simple answer is: CENSORSHIP. The powers that be do not want the Council party line to be dis-coloured by any winds of dissent or disengagement, so that means the only way you will get to hear directly from us is via other channels like social media or this website. Which is a very real shame, because I believe that opinion pieces from Elected Members are exactly what the public want to hear, not everybody uses social media, and we are not servants of the staff who are currently permitted to censor our views. I did receive this response from Mayor John Funnell, and reading between the lines he does not support my view, nor do the majority of current Elected Members who still don’t seem to want to recognise they are politicians. Mayor John: “Any current communication spaces are being redirected to support proposed amalgamation priorities. This means some regular content, including Councillor Kōrero features, will be paused while we focus on ensuring clear and consistent messaging around this work”.

Anyway I will leave you with this disallowed contribution of mine from July 2024, which was dated before the rates caps regime from central government was announced and was deemed by the staff censor to contain “misinformation” (it did not). I wonder which bits they did not want you to hear?

Imagine how much it is worth: Picture taken from Ngauruhoe Street looking down towards the lake over Taharepa Reserve. We are talking around 7 acres of prime near-lakeside real estate, and its not even much good for kicking a ball because it will end up on the road. Any takers to help out a cash strapped Council like ours?

Damn, that was a quick about face!! After the Minister of Education Erica Stanford admitted her Bill targetting homeschoolers was triggered by Gloriavale and she talked to some homeschool protestors at Parliament, there has been a backdown and the Bill will not proceed. Wow, what a turnaround and only in a matter of days too, and it didn’t even take an occupation of Parliament. What on earth is the world coming to, or is it perhaps that its election year?

Fridays are we California or a Texas?

Fridays Watery Wishlist

15 May 2026

Isaiah 40: 29-31: “He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall, But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.”

Another week goes by, and things are moving fast in local government. We now have slightly less than three months to decide where this Council wants to go, and as I see it unless a bunch of concerted proposals are submitted by 9 August the government will be putting us all where they want to regardless. If their received proposals are scattered in all directions that will absolutely give them the licence to do that, and like it or leave it I am sure they think that quite reasonably so. So how might those chips fall? Well if a webinar I attended a week ago with the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) is anything to go by – and these are the people administering the Simplyfing Local Government reforms and making the final recommendation to government – the major factors will be transport and water catchment. As I read it the transport element isn’t of much relevance to isolated places like Taupo, since the state highways which connect us elsewhere are already governed by NZTA – so for us it will be all about water – and as we happen to have the largest water source in the country which feeds about a third of the countries population (apparently), that means a Waikato Super Council just has to be beckoning.

So in the basis of transport I think places like Hutt City Council and Selwyn District Council will find it hard to avoid getting sucked into the new super Wellington and Christchurch super Councils no matter what they come up with, and we are in that same boat with water. But it isn’t a done deal yet, and I figure that roads are a bigger driver for amalgamating just because new ones cost so much to build – so there is still this window of opportunity to bring about a different result if we want it hard enough. And if we end up tied to a place like Hamilton, we will certainly become like minnows in the stream. I have worked out that some other Councils like Waitomo and Otorohunga already have a head start because they have been talking about it for ages, and the South Waikato look as if they are ahead of the game too, let alone Napier and Hastings which really should have amalgamated ages ago. But what do we really want to do? Because whatever we get stuck with could be for the next 40 years. Yes, this does matter.

And it really is all about cost, right? Because its the ongoing rampant rates increases which are the reason that the government is stepping in with these forced amalgamations, and is quite probably the main concern for you too. The fact is that our most vulnerable fixed income retirees are being forced off their land like here, and the implication of that is quite sobering when you consider the below statistics (sourced from a recent Taxpayer’s Union newsletter):

So what else has been happening in Council?

We had our second Water Services Committee meeting yesterday with a few things of interest – and believe it or not, water services can actually be quite interesting once you start looking. You can watch the entire meeting youtube HERE if you have a spare couple of hours, and as always the agendas are available HERE.

Item 5.2 was my successfully passed Notice of Motion for introducing some additional practical measures of affordability to which you can watch my 5 min presentation HERE, where I relate potential water service overspending to the over- complianced road cone nightmare which this country is only just waking up from, and I even manage to pseudo-quote the Lorax when I say: “UNLESS we start asking the right questions, we could end up just like the road cones. And if this Water Committee is the one which starts sounding any alarms, believe it or not then that actually makes us industry leaders”

Next was Item 5.3 presented by Nicola Hancock the Compliance and Monitoring lead who talked about all the water quality data gathering and gadgets which you can watch from HERE (and yes, road cones did come to mind), followed by Item 5.4 which was Tom Swindells Asset Water Manager with a very interesting presentation which you can watch HERE about the history of water treatment in the district from the year dot and where we are headed now. This includes the very compelling case for introducing water meters to every household – it means we might not ever need to build another water treatment plant for Taupo, whereas without meters it could be as soon as just 10 years away, with the long-term prognosis being that we would save around $45M over the next 30 years. Basically, the message is that making people pay for water they use will greatly incentivise water conservation like fixing that leaky tap (other parts of the country which have introduced meters have reduced demand by 30% or so). Anyway there will undoubtedly be another side to this equation, but if it doesn’t stack up then water meters it will just have to be.

In other news:

Talkfests continue: A few more Councillor Connect sessions happened this week and some were even audio-visual recorded like the Wairakei one which you can watch HERE. I gather there were also sessions in Nukuhau and Kinloch but didn’t make it myself to any of those.

Speaking of the devil: There were some Turangi committee co-governance meetings last week which were not audio recorded despite this being requested, because the Chair of that committee Te Wharau Jnr decided to refuse on the basis that several committee members were not very keen. I don’t believe in opacity where local government is concerned, and will be taking this further with the Ombudsman who have already told me they are keeping an eye on this place with this sort of thing. So watch this space.

And on that note: Next week on Tuesday we have a CLOSED workshop on the Broadlands Road Landfill Resource Consent. This is actually quite a big deal, because the hole is nearly full and if we don’t get a consent to make it bigger then we could end up trucking our waste elsewhere like Rotorua does – and that ain’t cheap. So if you are concerned with the price of rubbish bags now, things could get worse. There is a working group that includes Councillors Murch and Taylor who have been looking at this the past few months, and I believe there have been meetings at various marae. But you guessed it that cultural concerns are looking to be the biggest potential hiccup, and when that happens the doors of public scrutiny often get closed. I have requested to the Mayor and Chief Executive for this meeting to be made public and recorded, but so far had no response.

Christine’s Rant’in again: This time Councillor Christine is talking to the other Duncan about things like: state of the nation; local government; co-governance; and how its all going at our place Taupo – and according to Christine, things are looking pretty grim.

In the news: Councillors Wahine Murch, Ngahuia Foreman and myself took the opportunity to respond to journalist Bronson Perich after he contacted Elected Members for comment after the amalgamation announcement week before last, and you can read the article HERE. In addition, Wahine put together a nice 4 min summary which you can watch HERE.

Mosque stirs up: Seems like a new mosque happening in Taupo town is ruffling a few feathers if this social media post is anything to go by. Resource consent has already been granted, but a petition is afoot to try and stop it happening. I don’t quite understand the crux of the objections yet, but am guessing that some people are thinking of what is happening in Europe – but we are a long way from anybody, and boat people don’t come here. Another space to watch.

Te Reo only: New cafe Rumaki is set to open in Rotorua where the catch is you are only allowed to speak Te Reo. I don’t know how successful their shop will be, but as an opening strategy I cannot imagine a better way to get all the free media attention that they are getting, and as a tourist mecca for that sort of stuff must be the best place in the country to try it on. So good luck to them majorly, and it just goes to show that novel ideas are often worth a go.

Lake Rotoaira is doing it better than us: About the Gold Clam invasion that is , with certifications and wash stations at their boat ramps – why can’t we do the same? It doesn’t pay to think about if/when gold clams happen to Lake Taupo, but perhaps that is the biggest problem – we aren’t thinking hard enough.

Fiver ever going to finish?: Okay so my last weeks post which included some words about the Five Mile Bay occupation stirred a few people up. All good I say, and the sooner this is brought to light the better. I have a relation within Department of Conservation (DoC) who is familiar with the way these settlements go down, and he tells me they invariably happen behind closed doors (it was Doc land prior to around 2019). I did some initial investigations a few years ago and at least ascertained that it was Crown land around the year 1900, so it is a very good question as to whether previous to that the land was legitimately sold or confiscated as some maintain. It would take some additional expense to try and get an answer to that question (if there is any documented, that is), but if anybody wants to take it further I may be able to point them in the right direction – so feel free to message me if you are so interested. In any case, it is 100% certain that the old freedom camping area is a designated Recreational Reserve which is meant for the benefit of all the public and not just depending on whose cousin you are. If anybody has any doubts about this, you can check out the Treaty Settlement documents HERE.

Fridays Financial Friedman: Listen to this guy Milton Friedman, I think you’ll find he’s really good.

Fridays Fabulous Blockbuster

8 May 2026

Acts 4:1-5: “But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession. And he kept back part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” Then Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and breathed his last. So great fear came upon all those who heard these things. And the young men arose and wrapped him up, carried him out, and buried him”

A little harsh isn’t it? Poor Ananias was giving to the church but decided to keep a small portion back for himself, and for that he gets struck down? There aren’t many examples of things like this happening in the Bible after Jesus came to earth, in fact I can’t think of another single one. But it just goes to show that it wasn’t the act that condemned, it was the lie. I don’t think anybody can get through life without a few lies being told, but some lies are more damaging than others. God is watching.

Wow, what a week! No more Taupo District Council after 2028! So says the minister of local government Simon Watts on Tuesday in this official announcement which says that unless you are a Unitary Council already you must amalgamate with at least one other Council. I suppose Labour could always try and reverse it if they get into power this November general election, but we haven’t heard any peeps from them yet so my assumption is that it is full steam ahead. And my reaction? About bleeding time – but tempered by my recognition that bigger is not always better; the devil will be in the detail; and based on the Auckland example some wheels will inevitably fall off. Okay so we could have gone the Switzerland route and instead of going bigger gone smaller, but we are not being asked and it is out of our hands anyway.

I think a fairly good analogy of what we can expect is the Auckland Super City amalgamation which happened in 2010. My experiences of it as an Auckland Council staffer back then: Big promises and big expectations, but a quite a few disappointments all round.  The purported efficiency gains of reduced staff numbers were only temporary (which you can read about HERE), and in my neck of the woods only saw additional layers of management being added with reduced responsibilities for lower echelon staff. Local community influence was lessened, and the bureaucrats in Auckland Council and Auckland Transport gained the upper hand over elected representatives. Mayor Wayne Brown seems to have been successful in peeling some of that back recently, but it took all of 15 years to get there. Because I was still contracting for them, I was able to see that it took about a decade for Auckland Council to settle down into some new sense of normalcy. And if the Auckland example is anything go by, we will also be having a lot fewer elected members (Councillors reduced from over 100 to just 20).

So I foresee in two years time there will be no more Taupo District Council, and I won’t miss it so much – at least a bigger Council would undoubtedly have avoided some of the past dubious and daft decisions around here. My own experience with big restructures (both Councils and corporate) is that the doers on staff generally need not fear for their jobs, it is usually management and administration which take the hit. But we are being given only three months to decide who to buddy up with, so who will it be? Rotorua, South Waikato, Tauranga, or even what about Chatham Islands? This is going to be a very interesting time, and I think its quite a good thing we went it alone on the water services thing because those Councils which didn’t will probably feel entwined in those partnerships – but its not too late to unwind.

On local matters, this week we had the first of our community connect groups kick off this week in Taupo central and Mangakino. These were both audio-visual recorded and as at the moment only the Taupo one is available and viewable HERE. I personally don’t recommend it as very watchable unless you mainly want to hear about Chairperson Councillor Rachel Cameron’s view of the world and very little of anybody else’s (I did a transcript analysis, and Rachel did 49% of the talking – yes really). I did get a couple of chances to interject or inform, but was early on advised to basically clam up! (Watch that bit HERE if you like). Anyway my apologies to those who did attend (there were about 15 members of the public), I will try to get things sorted before next time.

One matter which did come up in that conversation was Five Mile Bay which you can watch from HERE. However we didn’t get very far with that discussion, because there is clearly an absence of understanding that there is a breach of the 2017 Treaty Settlement which has been going on since 2020 – the illegitimate blockade and occupation of the Recreational Reserve between SH1 and the lakefront. Maori ward Councillors Wahine Murch and Ngahuia Foreman don’t seem to understand this has caused significant strain on local relations and is a cause of so much mistrust – so why on earth should we consider partnering on a Joint Management Agreement (JMA) for the entire lake?? And all this after such a promising start in 2020 which you can read about HERE, but it seems that all it takes to ruin these things is a few disagreeable characters. This is the promise which was never kept:

On the brighter side, the Mangakino- Pouakani Representative Group was yesterday very ably chaired by Mangakino Councillor Hope Woodward on her first time at that role. There was a large turnout of locals (around 30 I reckon), and just goes to show that these smaller communities really do engage. The main chore of the day was to disperse $20K of community grant funding to $47K worth of applicants, and this was done quite amiably and in my opinion fairly. There was some discussion at the end about implications for the new super-sized Council, and one attendee expressed a negative to South Waikato for reasons unstated. The Waikato River Trails Trust applicant made an interesting comment regarding the recent footpath work done by Council in Mangakino which will apparently service their bike trails – the money spent on it could have funded 11 years of the work undertaken by their Trust (hope I got that right, but can’t check the audio-recording which is not yet up on youtube). Basically he was saying that Council built a flasher job when it needn’t, and the money could have been spent better elsewhere – he certainly isn’t the only Mangakino person thinking the same.

And on that note, I will just highlight a few recent articles about New Zealand’s propensity to overspend on Rolls Royce solutions versus the Toyota (and I would rather drive a Toyota across the Sahara desert anyway). There is Sean Sweeney former CEO of the Auckland City Rail Link (CEL) project who is saying that it could have been built for less than half the cost to save $2B, and that also applies to the latest stadium in Christchurch. The wealthy Danish apparently do things much better he reckons, with similar stations at about a quarter the cost – we all know that the rich hold tight to their money, so what does that make us? Then there is the rural bridge in Central Hawkes Bay which a contractor says he can build for a fraction of the $16M which his Council told him was needed to replace it. I tell ya folks, we need to get back to the No. 8 wire mentality which this country was built on – not always pretty, but it doesn’t send us broke.

A local example of recent infrastructure spending being questioned by a few is the roading improvements currently happening on Roberts Street and Titiraupenga Street in Taupo town central. I understand we are spending around $600K there and have asked to see any option reports that may have been done, because it seems to me that not a heck of a lot is being achieved for such an expense – but we will see. Probably more worthwhile than Christmas lights, but maybe not a few dinosaur sculptures. This sort of thing is the reason I think this Council needs a separate Financial Committee for elected members to have much better oversight of significant expenditure, instead of just tickboxing hundreds of items once a year at Annual Plan which is what happens now – so lets hope the new Council in 2028 has one of those. I have also taken the chance to point out that places like Auckland give out more detailed project information and sometimes even let constituents a chance to have their say before they happen, which is often not the case in Taupo with only minimal information going out.

And while we are on the topic of expenditure, the 2026 Taxpayer Unions Ratepayer Report is now out. So how does Taupo compare with the rest? Well you will have to look for yourself and we aren’t the worst, but we certainly aren’t anywhere near the best either. You can read a Taxpayers Union social media post summary here and a snippet below:

Notice that Christchurch refused to declare their consultant and contractor spend, which is something I have asked our Chief Executive about previously but also been declined – and this is a crucial figure for understanding if Council staffing levels are too high. Of significant note, Taupo District Council was one of only three provincial Councils which refused to provide this data (see HERE).

I will leave you to read for yourself our Chief Executives reasoning, if transparency is a very real thing around here. Note that a 2023 ratepayer report had indicated a $50M figure for the previous year for TDC, but I was never able to confirm.

Just one last thing:

On Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) membership: Waikato Regional Council did a vote which the Taxpayers Union president had some scathing things to say about, and he even calls LGNZ an immoral organisation (read the full article HERE). I can tell you that Taupo District Council has never had any vote on this in my time there including this year, and reading the room I wasn’t tempted to bother submitting a Notice if Motion for debate.

And that’s all folks I’m done. But I managed to get this one out for Friday, so I reckon that I’ve won.

Fridays tune for any trip or 70’s guitar nostalgia:

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 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!