John Howard

So, with our next long-term plan on the radar, how will Whakatāne District Council plan and shape up for this?

This is the council that has had six financial officers in four years. Has completed only 58 percent of projects and another 4 percent are partially complete.

So, we’ve been rated on and paid rates for the remaining 38 percent that are undelivered. Just how necessary are those projects?

The last long-term plan was about closing the gap on the $14 million operating deficit.

It’s now over $20 million and our total debt has risen to over $200 million.

We have environmental commissioners, an ex-accountant, institute of directors, businesspeople and a good cross section of people as councillors.

When are they going to step up and take a sledgehammer approach to this council?

We need more of them to start listening to Councillor Gavin Dennis and joining him. He asks a lot of good questions but rarely gets a straight answer and “we’ll get back to you” is just a fob off.

This long-term plan process needs to see them bring out the big sledgehammer and say “no”.

But, and that’s a big but, water has been taken out of general rating (meaning the rates you currently pay council excluding your water rate), so that means even if they leave rates the same, they need to be asked some seriously hard questions from us, the ratepayers and the ones who elected them to council.

But they do have a big hole to fill, and with wages and interest alone there won’t be much left to do the other things.

What is left to service the debt?

Then another response is, “we have kicked this or that project down the road for long enough we need to make a decision and do it”.

This is exactly what they are doing with the debt.

Kicking it down the road to the next generation to pay for.

We are always asked what services we want cuts to. How about showing us all the operational flow chart of employees for the council and the council-controlled organisation of Three Waters?

Then maybe we can all make some valuable and informed decisions.

Our council rates should go down because the new water entity ones are going to double, then double again, as this will be separate from your general rates.

So, our council can look real good and say or forecast our rates to stay the same only because they have so much debt that they were supposed to “close the gap on”. That 42 percent rate increase from our current three-year plan that we all stumped up and paid rates on. “To close the gap.”

Which really is a bit unfair as they are working in or with this long-term plan period plus the last two year, making it the 10-year span of planning.

I think this sort of planning needs to go out the door and the current plan is the only plan they work to. Not say something was in the previous long-term plan, so we need to work on it as well.

Because if that was the case … with the undelivered projects, the council must have a massive slush fund of money somewhere.

So, just think about this as our council is working on the next three-year plan and if you see any of our councillors, don’t be frightened to ask them the hard questions, so they can ask those questions of the staff delivering the long-term plan.

They need our direct feedback now as many of you may feel the past consultation process was a waste of time.

So, the first question to ask is, “why? Why do we need it? Why, why, why. And then make sure the answer is sound, logical and feasible. If not, it’s in the bin. It’s time to start from scratch with everything that the council spends money on.

It’s time to get the shop in order before we are amalgamated