Alexander (Sandy) Milne

I respond to Councillor Nandor Tanczos’ opinion piece, Beacon, August 29, in which he appears to be trying to dodge his part of the blame for our staggering rates rises.

I focus on the critical $13 million overspend in the cost of the badly timed Civic Centre tart-up.

The big-spending councillors and their numerous willing managers claimed that there were earthquake risks and other reasons for the spend-up, and they ignored the survey indicating the clear views of the great majority of ratepayers.

We had good Beacon coverage of this saga. Here are some facts:

■ The Civic Centre was already operational and compliant as an Emergency Operations Centre.

■ There was no need for further earthquake proofing. Health and safety, toilets etc were no problem.

■ The funders (ratepayers) were treated like puppets. The managers and councillors got their way.

I refer to the funding gap around that time between Whakatane District Council’s income from rates and fees etc, and the cost of running the district.  

I extracted this from the Long-Term Plan 2024-34 – Consultation Document.

Key question: How quickly should we close our funding gap?

When we talk about the funding gap, we’re referring to covering the costs to deliver our day-to-day services, renew existing assets, and cover the debt and interest payments associated with increasing demands to address historic under-investment in essential infrastructure assets.

Our starting position reflects a funding gap of approximately $14 million as a result of the combination of extraordinary cost escalations, and increased insurance and compliance costs. This is simply the reality of unforeseen and unprecedented increases, and not from financial mismanagement. We need to close the gap, and the question we’re asking is, how quickly?

Was the frivolous $13 million Civic Centre overspend the straw that broke the ratepayers’ back?

In his opinion piece, Mr Tanczos dismissed the ill-planned boat harbour fiasco and claimed, “it wasn’t funded out of rates at all”.  

The $9.8 million of the $30 million budget was from the Whakatāne community.  

Furthermore, paid Whakatāne District Council staff and our councillors spent many hours on that poorly scoped shambles, which was thankfully shafted because of pressure from residents who were more savvy than WDC.