Steve Chapman

Well, here we are again, Mr Mayor. It seems we are never to be on the same page.

Mostly my own fault for not understanding the full and due process of how a council works.

It seems the further I get into this quagmire called a marina, the deeper it gets.

But I still feel that as mayor you should be keeping your rate-paying bosses more informed. Was it not your commitment prior to being elected, to be transparent and keep people informed?

What happened to that?

The Beacon has run many of your Mayor Talks but none has been about the marina that I’m aware of.

We have had more mundane sujects.

I really do think it’s time the council came totally clean about this subect and informed us why things are as they are today.

Several points need to be explained to us, your bosses.

As a business, it seems back to front and more like we ratepayers are going to get screwed severely.

And I really have trouble with the way this has been set up. Would it be too much to ask for a rundown on why this business has been arranged backwards.

Why is it that the marina has been constructed first, instead of last?

It strikes me as an odd way to go about setting it up. Would it not be wiser to have made sure that people wanted the thing first.

Why was the bar not made a safer point of entry? After all, there is not much point having large boats up river that can access the bar only at certain times or tides.

All the ground work was done 40-odd years ago; studies were done, models made, costed etc.

And if my memory is correct, it was Ngāti Awa that put a halt on it all by not allowing the rock wall to be erected near sacred rocks – and now they want a marina.

Should this not be the first piece of the project, not the last?

The dredging of the river question has yet to be answered. Can it be done?

The cost of this work could make this whole business a very large debt for the ratepayers to pick up.

How to keep this channel open when future floods keep refilling it with gravel? What of the logs below the bed of the river?

The crew that placed the sewerage line under the river bed had real trouble with logs.

Has any survey been done to get an idea if it is even possible to dredge upriver, and what of the possibility of toxicity of this dredge material?

After all, there were 250,000 tonnes of waste discharged into the river over 49 years that have a possibility of turning up as a nasty ogre.

How does Whakatāne District Council intend to dispose of this mess?

It seems to me there has been no preparation or survey done. Is this another burden the ratepayers will have to shoulder? How much was this part of the grand design costed at? Or is that not done at all? To my way of thinking, this is the next problem after the bar being fixed.

Then we get to the marina, which has turned into a real headache for all concerned.

Has the council come to anything like a price to complete this mission or are us ratepayers going to shoulder this way-blown-out piece of work – the bit that should have been last on the agenda to price out.

To transport all this toxic material to another part of the island to dump, and at what cost? And what of the leachate?

There is no word on how or what is going to happen with that.

Once again, ratepayers?

The harbour fund will be gone long before that mess is dealt with.

I would say, and it’s my view only, as a business deal, the council is being shafted.

This was never about a marina, was it? It’s about cleaning up a piece of toxic waste left behind from Carter Holt’s earlier milling and tanalising plant, and the council or the ratepayers have been sucker-punched.

This will cost in the hundreds of millions, divided by 57 berths. How long before the council sees any returns or profits – maybe never –and now you’re telling us that parts of the plan and details will not be made public.

You are kidding? What gives the chief executive that sort of power?

We need a full and concise cost of the whole project down to the last dollar and I bet if we took this plan for a marina to any bank in the world set up this way, we would be shown the door.

Best to save what we can for the clean-up of Mataatua Reserve because that’s going to come up soon enough.

It’s surfaced already and the council owns that clean-up. After all, it brought every truckload of it at 4 shillings sixpence a load and it will cost more than 45 cents a load to rid of that mess.

And as for your invite to converse on this subject re: your article in the Beacon, with an open door policy, the second floor is behind locked glass doors.

When I pointed that out to the receptionist on the ground floor, I was told to leave my phone number, which is text-only, and I was told I would be notified in due course of an appointment time and date.

Meanwhile, we are more than two weeks down the line.

So, come on Mr Mayor. It’s time to talk to us all, time to explain how this marina is going to be good for us all.

You know you are being set up as the fall guy – you must be able to see that coming, surely.