I don’t want to make too big of a deal about Mayor John Funnell’srecent claim that Taupō’s debt would rise from around $900 to nearly $9,000 per rating unit if we get amalgamated into the proposed Western Waikato Unitary, but I don’t think it is a good idea putting out financial figures which are not like-for-like comparisons.
As reported in this recent article HERE, the $900 figure is an indicative net debt figure which takes Taupō’s substantial TEL investment into account. The nearly $9,000Western Waikato figure, however, is gross debt. Taupō’s own papers apparently put the like-for-like gross figures at approximately $4,320 versus $8,770 per rating unit. That is still a substantial difference and absolutely deserves scrutiny, but it is quite different from suggesting Taupō’s debt would increase almost tenfold. It also needs to be considered alongside proposals to ring-fence historical council debt so that existing borrowing remains attached, as far as practicable, to the communities that incurred it.
There is a wider issue here too. If we are going to offset Taupō’s investments against its debt when comparing councils, surely we should at least consider the assets and investments sitting on the other side of the ledger elsewhere. One interesting example is WEL Energy Trust , which currently has around $900 million of net assets. Under its Trust Deed, Hamilton City Council is the ultimate capital beneficiary of 63% of the Trust Fund, Waikato District 35% and Waipā 2%. Those interests are not equivalentto Taupō’s relatively liquid TEL investment. They are deferred until 2073 and subject to the Trust Deed and come with restrictions, so it would be equally misleading to simply deduct $900 million from the other councils’ debt. But assigning those interests no economic value whatsoever is not helpful either.
My concern isn’t to argue that Taupō would necessarily be financially better off through amalgamation – it potentially may not be. What I am saying is that, before broadcasting to our community that neighbouring councils see Taupō as a “cash cow”, or that our debt would increase tenfold, ratepayers deserve a genuinely consistent comparison: gross debt against gross debt, net debt against net debt, and a proper assessment of the assets, investments, infrastructure obligations and future liabilities that all participating councils bring to the table.
The Government has said it will assess the Head Start proposals and Cabinet will decide later this year which proposals progress to detailed design. Final decisions are expected in 2027 towards implementation for the 2028 local elections, so those detailed financial conversations are therefore still ahead of us. Taupō could have had greater involvement in shaping them earlier if we had remained engaged in the wider Waikato discussions, but after June we didn’t. So perhaps rather than making accusations about the motives of neighbouring councils, here is a question for Mayor Funnell:
Why did Taupō withdraw from those wider discussions in the first place, and what opportunities to influence the eventual outcome did we give up by doing so?
Because to me, that is the much more important question.
Ecclesiastes 11: 5-6 advises us not to cease striving to do good: “As you do not know what is the way of the wind, Or how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child, So you do not know the works of God who makes everything. In the morning sow your seed, And in the evening do not withhold your hand; For you do not know which will prosper, Either this or that, Or whether both alike will be good”.
This Friday update (being put out on a Saturday morning) is more rushed than usual and for two reasons: first that we have come to the end of a very long road where there’s really not too much more to say, and second that I headed out for my very first day of Winter snow and skiing. Because I only put these updates together starting Friday mornings and I have little inclination to carry it on in the weekend, and the mountain is always a wonderful place to be especially after a trying time as this, and I’m glad I went.
Wow, we decided. I mean at Thursdays Council meeting on Head Start of course, even though we really had already decided last Tuesday. To Backstop – or as some others are choosing to frame it – “put in an alternative proposal”. And I objected to all six resolutions, with only one exception and that was just to let Mayor John Funnell and his Deputy correct the grammar and punctuation. You can watch the full meeting HERE, and read the agenda HERE. For just my own little speech you can watch HERE (including the Mayor’s interesting acknowledgement afterwards that I endorsed his course of action?), and if you would rather read then below is the transcript including links to some of the referred models.
“I’ll start with a quote from the Minister Chris Bishop: “Our message to councils is simple: lead your own reform, or we will do it for you. Either way, change is coming”. These have been probably the most interesting 3 months in my time both this and last term, because it’s amazing how a bit of pressure can bring out the best of people, and also the worst. I think Waikato Mayor Aksel Bech taking the lead on something as constructive as the Western Waikato Unitary Model is extraordinarily commendable and an example of leadership in crisis. In contrast, I find it interesting that we are ending up fighting tooth and nail for more time, and our Mayor using I think, inflammatory and worst case scenarios. Perhaps it is a valid negotiation tactic I am unaware of. But I think with the benefit of history and hindsight may reveal who was right or perhaps even who was right for the wrong reasons.
The problem is I think we have been very much focussing on the form before the function, and become trapped in the financial data over everything and anything else. Because of that we had little to offer smaller potential partners like Ruapehu as they saw themselves losing out, and also to bigger ones like Rotorua because we only saw ourselves losing out too. The government tried to direct us towards catchment based models which we seem to have done anything but, instead thinking that small sub-regional would be better, neglecting to consider that being part of a large Unitary would enable increased influence to Wellington and better access to professional services. Trying to become a standalone Unitary Authority has even been floated as a viable option, which is not necessarily beyond us but would probably be expensive and therefore not very realistic.
I intend, indeed I feel obliged, to submit my own letter giving the government a fuller explanation of Taupo’s position, including that our community has not got strong views opposing the Waikato Western Unitary Council because it simply has not been informed enough to be able to give a proper opinion. And things like TEL and legacy debt haven’t been dealt with, simply because we haven’t discussed them as we decided to leave the negotiations early on.
So today Taupo is making our Head Start decision, but the matter won’t be resting there. We now have three quite similar proposals for large Waikato Unitaries floating round – the Western Waikato Unitary, a Waikato Region Council (WRC) model just recently shared, and my own Waikato Together model which was unfortunately not permitted to be presented in these Chambers for public view. I believe that in September the government will announce that we will be part of one of them, or a variation of them, and it will be a once in a generation opportunity to further develop our preferred future. To reassure our community that we will protect our financial and environmental wellbeing, and even improve community representation. We could decide to try and fight it, but I believe that would be a very big disservice to people of the Taupo District. Instead we should embrace the dialogue which will be taking place”.
So folks this Council is sending in our “proposal” on your behalf due this Sunday, but its really not that. We didn’t follow the rules of the game and are trying to invent our own and plea for more time, which is a hope indeed. I realise that we aren’t the only Council trying to do the same, but the referee Minister Simon Watts only just recently gave a yellow card warning that he wasn’t going to be putting up with any of that. What is it about Kiwis and our predilection to ignore rules and signs, and hope for reasonableness from the other guy? To clarify the situation even further, this from Hamilton Councillor Sarah Thompson about their own deliberations which resulted in not submitting a proposal:
“At the meeting, we were informed (through the mayor from a phone call with the minister the night before) that if we didn’t join Head Start by endorsing the Western Waikato Unitary amalgamation proposal (which includes Waikato District, Waipā, South Waikato, Hamilton and Taupō), then any future discussions about local council representation and reform for Hamilton would happen without us in the room. The same would go for Taupō which has also declined to be part of Head Start“.
One ring to rule them all: I have one more thing about the WRC: even though we know they will be disestablished by October 2028, they aren’t gone just yet. Waikato Regional Councillors voted last week to back a single region-wide Unitary council, and they are submitting their own proposal of which you can read a draft HERE. It is remarkably similar to my Waikato Together and even pointedly names subsidiarity as its basis (perhaps I even influenced them?). In any case – watch this space. I think there is every chance that the government could take it on board to implement and despite peoples expressed intentions to do something else. They could decide that the Waikato kindergarten needs some adult intervention, and to that argument I think the revealed antics in recent days all over the country must have given some ammunition. For example on Friday across the border, Rotorua decided to withdraw from being part of a seemingly done-deal proposal for a Bay of Plenty Unitary, mostly it seems on the extraordinary basis of an adopted informal policy to not include unwilling partners (Western Bays was declining). Nice guys don’t often win by being nice guys, don’t they realise that?
My questions for Taupo: Why didn’t Taupo District Council take the Waikato river catchment more seriously as the basis for any submission, despite the governments clear stipulation to do so? How come we were so apparently oblivious of the Western Waikato Unitary model until the 11th hour? And why couldn’t we pivot last Tuesday or even defer, to at least hear that proposal out before we decided to go Backstop? Folks, Taupo was always going to be a smaller player in the wider game, but I think this Council leadership never had any intention to even have that conversation and instead wanted to remain kings. They were in denial, we had our chance to be part of the wider Waikato conversations which were going on, but we inexplicably dropped out by as early as the end of June. I wrote about this a few days ago in Has Mayor Funnell Dropped the Ball? The answer to that in my mind is clearly “yes”, and although I wasn’t able to exactly pin down who did decide to withdraw, it was almost certainly made by one or more of the Mayor and his Deputy, perhaps also the Chief Executive, who decided on our behalf. Like I said in my speech above: “…it’s amazing how a bit of pressure can bring out the best of people, and also the worst”.
Anyway and apart from all that, I think that whatever we decided in these chambers is not likely to change the final outcome one iota. Its in the governments hands now, and many suspect perhaps they have a plan not prepared to deflect from much anyway. Yes the Local Government Act can give us some protection if we really want to resist, but the government has already mentioned that it intends to pass new legislation to get around that. If Labour get voted in November it could be a different story, but even that is not assured as they seem to have even bigger centralising tendencies although they could relent on this one. So overall, I give it at most about a 1 in 5 chance that Taupo District Council will remain intact after October 2028. Some of you may recall me calling for a revolution in the 2025 local elections, well I think I got that wrong and should have read my history better. Because in this country, the acts of revolution always seem to come from above.
Only a couple of other things and they are on the same topic:
For the latest on amalgamation proposals around the country: you can read HERE , but because its a week old is already out of date.
Councillor Wahine Murch wants us to: That’s right, go to the steps of parliament. Here we have the Mayors of Orotohanga and Waitomo in Wellington petitioning for their own standalone King Country Council. I have already told Wahine that I won’t be coming along, but if she can convince Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor to protest as well then my world really has gone topsy turvy.
Fridays piece of 70’s nostalgia to keep eggs in your underpants, and dammit why the hell not?
Taupo Mayor John Funnell’s quite alarming statement on Saturday presents a single interpretation of a financial model prepared by Taupō District Council’s Chief Financial Officer. It reflects an assessment of the available financial information, and using a common financial methodology concludes that Taupō would be financially significantly disadvantaged under a Western Waikato unitary authority. Some are calling it scaremongering, and with the Mayor using terms like “hostile takeover” and saying that rates will increase tenfold – I tend to agree.
What that model does not do is examine every possible implementation of amalgamation. As the Councils Financial Officer has now confirmed to me, its purpose was to compare the financial position and performance of councils, not to predict every possible amalgamation scenario. Alternative financial structures such as legacy debt arrangements, targeted rates and staged financial integration may have been discussed as part of the broader options analysis, but were not modelled as separate financial scenarios. These distinctions matter. A comparative financial model is a valuable contribution to the debate, but it should not be mistaken for proof that every possible form of amalgamation would inevitably produce the same financial outcome. And it cannot be said to be taking all things into account. For example I have heard that Councils involved in the Western Waikato proposal have a $1B energy trust of which they are due to inherit a significant part in the year 2073, and I doubt if that was factored in. The fact of the matter is that the Mayor is presenting one possible outcome as though it were inevitable, when it simply isn’t.
However, my biggest concern is not the model. It is that we appear to have surrendered our opportunity to test assumptions, challenge conclusions and influence the proposal from within. I have now learned that Taupō District Council withdrew from discussions on the Western Waikato proposal over a month ago. If that is correct, we voluntarily gave up our seat at the table while other Councils stayed to continue the conversation. In any negotiation, being involved is almost always preferable to commenting from the sidelines, yet that seems to be where we have landed ourselves now.
I am asking Mayor John Funnell why Taupō withdrew from those discussions, and why Elected Members were not advised at the time. I believe our community deserves the answer to that question, before we decide if he has dropped the ball and is now trying to blame the other players.
Ecclesiastes 10:20:“Do not curse the king, even in your thought; do not curse the rich, even in your bedroom; for a bird of the air may hear your voice, and a bird in flight may tell the matter”.
Council let you down this week folks, and leadership matters. If nothing else you glean from the happenings this week, take at least that.
Yes its been a rough and tumble few months alright and we are nearly at the end of the road. But Auckland didn’t get a chance to decide their future in 2010 nor the amalgamations of 1989, and a bit of pressure isn’t always a bad thing. August 9th is the deadline for Councils around the country to submit their Head Start proposals to government to consider for a new reset of local government, and Taupo District Council came up with…nothing. Tuesday was decision time (watch the meeting HERE, and for the agenda HERE) and was advertised as a debate but there was to be no debate, because Mayor John Funnell said that at the very outset. My own 10 minute Waikato Together proposal was disallowed to be presented in public view, and only a handful of Taupo District Council councillors had bothered to look at it even though it was submitted last Friday. Instead we were subjected to two hours of the staff presenting their point of view, with the following so-called ‘debate’ introduced by the chairperson Mayors stifling comment of “you get the chance to make one comment only before we go to the vote” for arguably the most important opportunity of this Council for probably 40 years (watch that moment and my own statement immediately following HERE). So at the end we decided to effectively do nothing except send to government a sternly voiced note of disapproval. Because we already run a tight ship much better than the rest, and amalgamating with anybody else would only make us worse. Yeah, right.
Incidentally we also had Mayor Aksel Bech of Waikato District Council and Mayor Mike Pettit of Waipa District Council in the room, who travelled all the way down to answer questions in case they were asked regarding their Roto ki te Moana / Lake to the Ocean proposal which also includes Taupo, South Waikato and Hamilton City (read about that HERE). Theirs is an impressive submission developed along similar lines to Waikato Together, addressing function first before form and including emphasis on local voice with things like strengthened community boards. It also precisely fits the government mandate of designing around the catchment areas, and a Waikato river model would hardly be complete without Taupo. Except it was never tabled or circulated for elected members to properly consider, even though I have just learned our Mayor received it as long ago as 22 July. I talked to Aksel afterwards and he was understandably perplexed, in fact I don’t even think he really believed what he had witnessed – that we had disregarded their proposal without even discussing it. I had to explain to him that yes, that is really what just went down.
Folks there are of course a few other vagaries to all this, and of course I am just giving you my own point of view. But the past few days for me have left me angry simmering that this Council has acted in such a foolish way. It is being now spun as bravery, but nothing could be so farther from the truth. All that Taupo District Council has done the past three months is circle around the problem without coming up with any solution. All that is being defended is the status quo, which by the way also means that staff get to keep their jobs.I can tell you this decision is absolutely not in the districts best interest, because now we are at the whim of the government to decide. But I am not all sad about it, because there is scant chance this Council will escape as a Waikato river catchment unitary clearly won’t be formed without Lake Taupo being included. I believe that will very likely to be made happen since South Waikato recently voted to join the Lake to the Ocean proposal, and that makes the requisite majority of Councils agreeing for it to be eligible to succeed. So we could have been an enthusiastic part of the solution, but will now instead get treated like a recalcitrant teenager being dragged along for the ride.
Although this Council’s behaviour should be seen as a massive failure of leadership, there will still be opportunity to reset the way things operate in a constructive way. But is going to take the adult government stepping in, and hopefully by next election 2028 Taupo District Council will all be swept away. Cos folks let me tell you if we don’t learn soon that is gonna be the case (and they said we would hear in September), I don’t very much feel like sticking around.
Okay apart from all that, what else is going on?
Spinning your wheel: Tuesday we also had a Council meeting where nothing too much earth shattering did go down (you can watch HERE with the agenda HERE). Item 5.4: “Financial Stewardship, Efficiency and continuous Improvement Update” was a politically timely item relating to our non-participation in the Head Start process and reads pretty much exactly as it sounds – a self-congratulatory report on all the things that staff are doing to try and keep a lid on costs, and righteous justification where it can’t (watch from HERE). There was nothing in there about Elected Members getting more direct say in the big financial decisions as they go down, which just highlights the current philosophy at this Council of keeping governance out of so-called ‘operational matters’, when governance is in fact responsible for it all. So in other words it is attempted political explanation rather than offering much of a solution, and it also doesn’t explain why some other Councils have been able to keep rates under the rate of inflation but not us.
How we vote: Item 5.6 at the same meeting brought up the question of whether we want to stick with First Past the Post (FPP) or change to Single Transferrable Vote (STV) for the 2028 election (watch from HERE). Even though I am hoping there won’t be a Taupo District Council left by then, it could potentially be applicable and Elected Members have until mid September to decide. But we won’t be talking to you about it unless you come to us first, because although I reckon we have time to consult the public the Mayor decided not. Anyway in the meantime we have scheduled our Electoral Officer to come for a workshop on 11 August which I presume will be open for public to attend or watch online, so we can all get clued up about the difference because it is not well understood – and there is a mood for change.
Landfill slipperies: Thursday we had the first public open workshop regarding the Taupo landfill consent application going forward (watch HERE). We have had several workshops behind closed doors before on this topic from early in the year, unjustifiably deemed as confidential as per the usual pattern intended to conceal any hints of controversy (wait…didn’t our new Mayor have an election platform of transparency?). Anyway my takeaway is that the only real objections of any substance are cultural and relate to the proximity of nearby Mount Tauhara. If we don’t get the consent renewed to expand the landfill by December 2027 then we will have to truck it out instead, and that’s gonna cost all of us some big bucks every week. The consent process can be time consuming so there is every chance this could happen – so in hindsight we should have started much sooner. I also brought up the solution used overseas as an alternative to landfill: incineration. Taupo resident Richard Hoadley has expressed great interest in this topic for some time and even got a quote from the UK for something less than $5M that could handle our 30,000 annual tonnes. But staff member Brent Aitken backed up by Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor is inferring them as snake-oil salesman, and I am not acquainted enough with the subject to be able to dispute. But I can tell you that I am not the only Councillor not 100% convinced this is not a real alternative, and this is exactly the reason why I think Council should have a set aside fund for Elected Members to use to pay for independent expert advice. If I were the Waikato Regional Council (WRC) reviewer of this consent and knew my stuff, I would be demanding that all practicable options do get presented – but I don’t have too much faith that WRC reviewers will be that.
Beware of power grabs:Auckland Transport is migrating to become part of Auckland Council later this year, and even though Local Boards were apparently expecting to have some say in the number one city problem of transport, already the powers are at play. As Councillor John Gillon is pointing out here, someone in Auckland Council yesterday decided to redesignate roads all over the place as Arterial thus remain for only regional committees to decide. Being a transport professional from that region I am familiar with a lot of their street network, and I can tell you they have every cause to complain (North Shore shown on left with the new arterials in blue). People, stuff like this always happens in organisational rejigs and it is all to do with power.
Why I don’t use AI Slop: Except for when I do. Here is a wonderful explainer why proper writers won’t use AI, written by one of my favourite blogger authors who I am sure has greatly influenced what I do.
Fridays explainer because its important you know about Susie:
In times of chaos I find myself turning to my favourite book of the Bible Ecclesiastes 9:10-12: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going. I returned and saw under the sun that – The race is not to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong, Nor bread to the wise, Nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill; But time and chance happen to them all. For man also does not know his time: Like fish taken in a cruel net, Like birds caught in a snare, So the sons of men are snared in an evil time, When it falls suddenly upon them”.
Finals – I am talking about the soccer world cup on Monday of course, so who’s your pick Spain or Argentina? I myself don’t have a predetermined favourite, I just want to see a clean exciting game. A bit like this Council amalgamation thing going on right now really, but a problem is that the ground rules weren’t clear from the outset including goal and sidelines. And there isn’t even just one ball either, we are all just running around kicking about our own. And by the way if you hadn’t gleaned from recent social media messaging by some other Councillors, Taupo is very much headed towards the Backstop option of not submitting a Head Start proposal at all, because its all seeming just too hard. In some ways it would be nice to go back to the 850 or so borough councils that we used to have before 1989 (along with a decent Public Service), but we are way too far down the track to go back to that. So I am seeing this as a very great missed opportunity to do things a lot better.
Which brings me to describe what I believe is going on here: a Collective Action Problem whereby everyone acting in their own perceived interest produces an outcome that is worse for everyone collectively. Another analogy along the same lines: Prisoners Dilemma. You see, I have been talking to a handful of Councillors in the Waikato region, and the thinking is more or less the same – Hamilton doesn’t really want to get shackled with rural problems, and almost everybody else doesn’t want to get dominated by the electoral demographics of big place Hamilton. Fair enough you might say, because your district Councillors are after all only elected to represent their own local communities. But the problem is that Hamilton does actually subsidise the rest of the region when it comes to Regional Council responsibilities. So although Councillors aren’t acting irrationally, the problem is that they can be behaving against theirs and ours best overall interest. It also won’t help that many Councils like ours have staff leading the process, who can’t help but want to keep their jobs close to where they live now. By the way Federated Farmers have a preferred model for amalgamation which you can read about HERE – and they pointedly aren’t happy and want to separate rural district Unitaries from the urban.
Much of the debate surrounding local government reform has focused on what communities might lose, and this is understandable because Councils are elected to protect the interests of their own communities. However, this can make it difficult to consider opportunities that may benefit the wider region while still protecting local identity and democratic voice – that was really the role of the Regional Councillors whose role by October 2028 will be defunct. The challenge is therefore not simply whether reform should occur, but whether it can be designed well enough that communities have confidence they will not lose the things that matter most to them. We are talking urban versus rural, small towns versus big, and not forgetting Maori interests too.
One of the strongest arguments in favour of larger Unitary councils is their ability to engage more effectively with central government on matters of regional significance. Since Auckland’s amalgamation in 2010, the city has been able to present a single strategic voice when negotiating major infrastructure and investment projects with Wellington. The most notable example is the City Rail Link, a jointly funded multi-billion-dollar partnership between Auckland Council and the Crown, supported through a formal governance and funding agreement. Auckland has also been able to negotiate integrated transport planning, housing initiatives and, more recently, New Zealand’s first City Deal with central government. While larger size alone does not guarantee better local outcomes, it can provide greater strategic influence, stronger negotiating capability and improved access to nationally significant investment opportunities. These are genuine advantages that any future Waikato or Central North Island unitary authority could seek to capture, while ensuring that strong local representation and community decision-making are not diminished. It also makes more sense for dealing with region-wide environmental issues.
But could a large Unitary address the aforementioned trepidations around different community and area interests to still reap the big size benefits? There are definitely means and ways of doing it which I won’t go into now, but it certainly is looking as if it will be up to the government after 9 August to decide for Taupo. In the meantime a link to the excellent Lower Hutt Mayors proposal put out last week (read the full proposal HERE) which includes things like a first principle of subsidiarity (a big word which basically means local voice), legacy debt ringfencing, and careful delegated decision-making for Community Councils as below.
In addition, below is a clearer copy of the Waikato Regional Council (WRC) suggestion which I posted last week, and under that another sample model they developed.
Backstopping with no proposal at all and an attached letter of complaint to the Minister as this Council is most probably headed, to me does not correspond to a positive way forward or valid form of resistance which I expect it will be framed. It is basically saying that the status quo is just fine, which if you read my posts should know by now it most certainly ain’t. Recent talk in Chambers has been around us being more financially secure than any of our prospective partners – to which there are some grains of truth – but it has all been at your expense, so do remember that. And as for being kept properly informed about the Head Start process as we go, compare what you have been able to access about Taupo, say compared to these analyses in Northland and Wairarapa. But it isn’t quite over yet.
In other news:
Backpedalling to look cool: Mayor John Funnell put out a statement this week about having a relook at the Annual Plan (AP) just signed off a few weeks ago, because I think he has worked out that some other Mayors like Waitomo and Wellington took their election promises more seriously than he. Waitomo mayor John Robertson said he instructed the council’s Chief Executive to ensure rates rises kept in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is pretty much the most basic Key Performance Indicator (KPI) I think there should be. The main reason I refused to vote my agreement to the AP is the absence of regular and proper scrutiny by governance of Council spending including capital works, and going back afterwards to double-check after they have been approved like this is a very poor substitute.
Recall my numerous attempts in Chambers from Christmas onwards to discuss the revision of financial delegations from the current setting whereby the Chief Executive has virtually unlimited spend discretion? That would mean proper reporting on large items over $500K, and the recent Roberts St / Titiraupenga St works are a classic example of works never justified to elected members before they happened. Mayor John was so disinterested in that topic of delegations that he would not allocate any time in our induction sessions or even allow me to present 5 min in a public forum! So to me this is sounding very much like a hindsight act of desperation and the words sound very hollow indeed. I will have a quick look to see if I can find any potential savings, but the above spreadsheet snippet is an example of the sum total of information we are now being given – “line by line”!
Taupo dodged a bullet too: Far North Councillor Davina Smolders points out some home truths about some un-costed co-governance deals her Council up there is attempting to push through the back door. Just as well we have whistleblowers like her prepared to do the hard yards, remember last years Joint Management Agreement (JMA) and who saved you then? That one ain’t over yet either, but I am guessing it will kick back up soon.
Sam Neil died in vain or vein? Knowledgeable Guy Hatchard has some very un-mainstream views about the death of well-known actor Sam Neil and hopes it will draw attention to the medical mishap at play. Worth a good read if you aren’t up with the play.
Fridays people pushing back hard: Here we have some Council bureaucrats in the United States trying to push their narrative down resident throats, but they just ain’t having it. People of Taupo, you have been getting this done to you for such a long time.
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:
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 alienexperience 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 BackstopOption 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 standardby 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 fundedhit-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
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 thanOption 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’sKey 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 astandout 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 CouncillorDavina 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.
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
God gives consequences to even His greatest servants and there are none without fault in the Bible, so what makes anybody think there won’t be any for you? Numbers 20 10-12: “And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock; and he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels! Must we bring water for you out of this rock?” Then Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their animals drank. Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe Me, to hallow Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.”
Decision time is looming for the future of Taupo District Council, and how is it all looking to me? Controlled chaos is still how I describe this foisted and rushed amalgamation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is all bad. You see despite some of the things I might say – the negativity, I mean – I am an optimist at heart. Things might work out quite a lot better than now, and that is good enough for me. Are you an optimist or a pessimist, an idealist or a realist? Take your pick there is something in this for everybody.
I have pretty much had enough of this Kindergarten Council with its boorish culture of intransigency towards its governing members who are house trained to acquiesce, and although its a shame things have gone this far and smaller really can be nimbler – that certainly ain’t the case here. If the likes of Hamilton City want a piece of us we would be shortsighted to instinctively decline (and they are doing some great things to curb costs lately), and I certainly don’t think it would be healthy to get tied up with other backwater Councils of a similar vein to ours. It’s time we paint a new canvas with an improved outlook and a wider gene pool.
Smalltownitus is one name I give to how we are afflicted here. Everybody knows somebody connected with anything, so public commentary gets stilted because adverse reactions can really affect the bottom line. It’s only because I have zero business interests in this district which leaves me more or less uncompromised, and is one reason I think bigger can really be better for a small town as this. Last week I mentioned non-participation in the Headstart process as a pathway to remain independent – and it still is – but after reflecting on the ways of fickle central government I reckon its a pretty fragile hope, and it is now apparent that we could get chucked into somebody else’s proposal if the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) decide. So sitting on our backsides is looking a decidedly risky affair, and why stick up for a flawed status quo anyway?
There were no Council meetings of any consequence this week that I attended anyway, so what else is on the radar?
Missing the point:Taupo District Council is parading its recent AA credit rating as a win, and I am not saying it isn’t. But I think most of us will disagree with performance manager Sarah Matthews who claims: “This confirms we’re continuing to manage our finances prudently and have strong safeguards in place. In line with what the community asked us to do during our last Long Term Plan process, we’re investing for the future while keeping debt under control”. My own response to that is shown right.
Slack water? Last week I mentioned the Water Services Committee meeting on 11 June, my notes were very brief and below is the subsequent and quite pointed letter sent to us from retired engineer Phil Shields about the state of the reported stormwater system. You may want to read Mr Shields full letter HERE and to watch those particular proceedings again can do so HERE. I will leave you with this excerpt below:
South Waikato Pre-school: The week before last South Waikato District Councillor Zed Latinovic was censored on two Code of Conduct complaints in a kangaroo court of a proceedings which you can read the media article about here. I am acquainted with Zed and closely followed how it all went down, with experienced Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee turning up to represent Zed but them both walking out after being faced with a 15 min maximum time to present a defence case – and this after over $34K had been expended by the prosecuting independent investigator. You can watch the proceedings HERE on the Councils own media channel, which cost them a small fortune because it enables them to readily edit out the bits they don’t want people to see. I understand that Zed has probably little intention of complying with the stipulated punishment of: “written apology to council staff, further training and mentoring on his duties, council procedures and conduct as councillor”, and in his same circumstances neither would I (one of the upheld complaints was because in a Council meeting he naively used the term “creative accounting” to describe staff financial handling – yes really, it is that trivial). Ugh, I know Taupo District Council is a dog at times but that place makes us look like a shining beacon of democracy.
On the brighter side:Tararua District Council seem to be doing quite a good job with their amalgamation community engagement as their webpage indicates, and I gather they even had some town hall meetings early in the piece. I quite liked watching a short of their 10 June extraordinary meeting which you can watch HERE. One thing I noticed though, is that all the men were in suit and tie – do you think that’s important? Anyway, it is nice to hear that there are some not-dysfunctional small Councils out there.
Concealed election ripoff: I was finally able to confirm but only after the Ombudsman stepped in and it took over eight months, that Taupo District Council paid $235k to Electionz.com to undertake the recent 2025 local body election. I submitted a LGOIMA request for this information mainly because I had an unsatisfactory experience with Electionz.com with regard to their refusal to answer a basic question around indications of potential fraudulent voting (the Ombudsman could not help with that part, because as Electionz.com is a a private organisation it has no jurisdiction). I think it is interesting that such a significant sum can be effectively hidden within Annual Plan (AP) and Long Term Plans (LTP), not to mention the hundreds of other line items which are allowed no direct scrutiny by elected members (and the rushed AP & LTP process effectively precludes that anyway). But as far as I am concerned and because they unreasonably withheld important information upon request, for future consideration I would not be touching Electionz.com with a bargepole.
Guide to Amalgamate: The Taxpayers Union Guide to Amalgamation is now available and it makes for some good reading. Much of it is detail applicable after 9 August when fuller proposals need to start being prepared, but they are definitely against the rush which is being imposed and some of their wishlist items like waiting until a full review of the Auckland Super City experiment seem quite forlorn.
Oops better fix that: And the Taxpayer’s Union have been busy bees on something else too – they claim to have uncovered with Local Government Minister Simon Watts’ Local Government (Systems Improvement) Bill currently before Parliament and in the last stages, that it contains some pretty bad errors – and hopefully they are errors not by design. In effect it is being stated that the new Bill: “creates rights for Councillors that are inferior to those already enjoyed by ordinary members of the public under freedom of information law (LGOIMA)”. You can watch the Platform interview with Taxpayers Union Chief Executive Jordan Williams HERE. I think it is a shame that our society is starting to become so litigious and pedantic instead of the egalitarian she’ll be right, but when trust gets eroded as much as it has then this is where we end up. Anyway, here is my brief note to Hr Simon Watts below:
Community Transport Fund $500K: Yes really. Waikato Regional Council gives it away every year to worthy applicants, but it is something that clearly is not well publicised. In summary: “This fund aims to enhance accessibility and mobility for residents, particularly in rural areas where public transport options may be limited. The grant provides financial assistance to community transport providers, enabling them to offer essential transport services for health, education, and social purposes”. It occurs to me that this could be relevant to places like Turangi and Mangakino which do not have regular bus services, so if anybody out there is interested you can read about it HERE. There was also the WRC Transport Committee meeting last week where the item got discussed HERE, and I believe the next time applications are open will be February 2027.
Spending sprees continue: I got some more information about the roadworks on Titiraupenga Street in Taupo town central shown below, and it more or less confirmed what I suspect – not only are these works which I understand cost in the order of $600K a very big nice to do, but they don’t even address the biggest actual problem which is crashes at the Roberts Street intersection.
If I had been on the design team would have instead done something like below with none of the rest, costing a fraction of the above to build. We wouldn’t touch the kerbs, and we would address road safety (police reported crashes in the last 5 years shown inset, including two injury). Then again, I’m just a humble traffic engineer… Yet another reason why we need a Council where this sort of thing gets run past your elected members for permission first, and at very least for them to ask such basic questions as: “Why?”
Fridays wrap with Duncan’s novel 3 X car lane / 2 X truck lane compact roundabout to get things moving:
To those who don’t yet understand those who do believe, here is a pertinent message from Anselm the Archbishop of Canterbury (1033 –1109 AD),
I had a question put to me earlier this week – where do I get the energy to do these weekly messages? It has become a disciplined form of manic energy every Friday morning to put it all together, but has become habit now and even though I know the readership is limited, I find it helpful to process the chaos of a lot of things going on at once. And in local government right now, there is quite a lot of that.
For whatever reason the government is hell bent on the Auckland Supercity model of which I am moderately familiar with. I am getting a sense more than anything though, that the politics and assurance of adequate local representation is everywhere the big question being asked. That will be a devil in the detail for whatever amalgamated entity we become part of, and for Taupo if we decide that we want to go a certain direction it will be largely based on fears and anticipations that local representation could be swamped by bigger brother problems of a city or other emphasis (as an aside, some are challenging the legal right of government to make these changes at all, but I have confidence in the powers that be to rejig the rules to suit themselves) . Sound about right to you? I have no personal favourites right now, except a wariness of being tied to another provincial kindergarten like here, or to an overbearing city bureaucracy. So will it be into the frying pan, or into the fire?
Taupo District Council put out a survey on the amalgamation to residents this week, with submissions due in just a few days time on 17 June. You need to know that this survey was released without the vetting of your Elected Members despite several of us requesting this to happen, and we were only informed of it a few hours before being put out. I have a few doubts about the survey which I will describe below, but more importantly it should highlight the mischaracterisation that just because we have elections every three years that does not correspond to the people you elect having meaningful oversight of the way this Council functions. I had a few depreciating words to say about due process contrary to the way this was railroad handled which resulted in our staff “Communications Manager” walking out of the room, but I do not put the ultimate responsibility on her – Mayor John Funnell is the one choosing to do things this way, with some prompting from behind I am sure. Last week I mentioned we had a steering group of several Councillors leading the way, but that idea has since been disbanded before it even started, and for no given reason other than I suspect one or two of its members were making things inconvenient. Yes it is a shambles alright, and I don’t know why our Mayor just doesn’t drop the pretense now and let his Deputy drive the boat. So right now for me, the idea of dissolving this Council isn’t sounding such a bad idea at all, and its just a pity we have to wait a whole two years for that to happen (timeline below).
About that survey: Unlike the Western Bay of Plenty District Council survey which gave a shortlist of five viable amalgamation options, our one only talks in quite abstract terms, like “Team up with a neighbouring council”. Along with the dearth of information about viable partner options, the submission process to this survey is completely unguarded from mischievous bias as no submitter identification is required – so people could be submitting from New Delhi to Timbuktu for all we know. This means that the survey results could be virtually useless, thereby making us vulnerable to legal challenge if we try to use results to justifying any particular direction we want to take. And my reading of a recent legal opinion by Simpson Grierson about this local government reform, is that any Council putting up a Head Start proposal without doing its due diligence with the community is exactly lining itself up for that – so the more risk averse Councils could well be giving up now altogether. Anyway I am not trying to discourage you from putting in your own submission and we really would love to hear from you, but please bear this in mind.
All that local woe aside, what are some other places doing? Well I have to say that there are some clearer heads than ours around, and recommend keeping an eye on how Rangitikei District Council are doing things like this excellent 14 min interview with Mayor Andy Watson. I quite like their Councils social media page too, perhaps that is something we could emulate? Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell seems to be angling for a Taupo-Rotorua-to the sea kind of place, which in the Waikato times our own Mayor John Funnell is reported as not being overly enthusiastic about. Apart from that I haven’t heard too much else through the grapevine, and it seems that a lot of these Mayors could be keeping these things close to their chest and not talking much to their fellow elects – just like here.
Okay, so what else can we call news?
Democracy restated, or democracy undermined? Minister of Local Government Simon Watts has caused quite a stir with his recent announcement to remove voting rights from unelected members on Council committees. Although it was undoubtedly stirred up by Far North Councillor Davina Smolders and aimed at the overtly undemocratic things going on up there, this will affect every Council in the country from the Far North to Bluff – because everybody has at least one committee with one or two of those. But some places are more prolific than others, and sounds of alarm from Rotorua and Hastings seem to me to ring a little hollow (with one exception now being questioned in Auckland?). I have pondered this question before actually, because on the one hand it could be beneficial to have a few engineers on board an infrastructure type committee instead of leaving it completely in the hands of the amateurs to decide. But overall I am quite convinced that this change will be a good thing (even engineers have bias), and it should highlight why elections are so important for getting in wise people who can see the big picture instead of stacking the deck with those who can’t. Elections matter, and that means voting matters too – will people ever learn?
Politics don’t just pontificate: On that note, aspiring politician from down south Zoran Rakovic wrote an inspiring piece about the importance to get organised or stay forever irrelevent. For somebody like me who prefers to write about instead of deal directly with troublesome and unpredictable, too often disappointing sometimes even downright nasty people – I will try to take this in.
Deep diving into the mystical land of “Operational”: I have had some quite inspiring news this week about how things work elsewhere. You may recall my often voiced words about financial accountability and local lack-thereof, as it happens they are doing something about it in Auckland and Hamilton and even better than I have come up with. Auckland has a Value for Money (VfM) Committee which has been going for around five years and is comprised of elected members tasked with overseeing the VfM programme via: reviewing council operations; identifying efficiency and savings opportunities; commissioning deep‑dive reviews; and monitoring implementation of recommendations. This year they have a target of $80M savings and seem well on the way to achieving it. Hamilton have just recently started up a new Procurement Committee chaired by Councillor Andrew Bydder, whom I caught up with last week and which he tells me is more or less attempting to do the same. How so very refreshing, how so indeed! These go further than even what I have been suggesting for Taupo District Council which has been stuck in the kindergarten keep-your-eyes-and-hands-off-operational-matters style of governance for so long, it is no wonder rates here are sky high and even though we are relatively trouble free unlike a city or coastal place falling to bits every time a storm hits town. Damn, maybe buddying up with a place like Hamilton isn’t such a bad idea at all.
Turangi bus one step closer, or even further away? Turangi Councillor Sandra Greensladegets in the news to advocate for a commuter bus for her town with mention of potential Ministry of Education hurdles. I am turning up to the Waikato Regional Council (WRC) meeting this coming Monday to see how it all unfolds, but I’ll give you a heads up clue right now – don’t expect anybody to go out of their way for you, if you can’t be bothered to lift a finger for yourselves.
Another crash outside Chem Warehouse: As reported recently in social media, picture on right. To answer your questions: 1/ Yes I am a traffic engineer 2/ Yes it needs a roundabout 3/ No it wouldn’t cost much. 4/ Because Kindy Council doesn’t let me near it.
Ombudsman on the way: To rescue us from opacity and behind closed doors governance, that is. Last month I lodged a complaint about the refusal of the Chair Te Wharau Walker Junior to audio-visual record the Turangi Co-governance Committee which the Ombudsman is currently looking into, and this Wednesday just gone Chair and Mayor John Funnell unbelievably did the same! I tell ya folks, the next two years is gonna feel like ten… But people of Turangi and everywhere else, I need to tell you: You are allowed to make your own audio or video recording of Council or Committee meetings, and nobody can stop you. The relevant section of our Standing Orders I give below, and note it is “notified” and not “asked”.
A Crux worth reading: I have heard us referred to as the poor man’s Queenstown before and perhaps they are right. But they do have some quality reporting going on down there worth a read, like this article here (you may need to email subscribe) where I love the killer line near the end which is just SO relevant to here:
“Under (new Queenstown Mayor) Glover’s leadership our councillors seem to have been conned into thinking that if they are all really nice to the senior council staff – everything will be fine. God help us“.
An important aside: I came across this commentator Nigel Anthony Gray who has a fairly solid social media following, and his article about the new anti-stalker laws seem a little worrying. Read more about them here if you like, and if he’s right then duncandoestaupo and the like could be headed for some jail time don’t you think?
