Brian Anderson The Western Front www.sunlive.co.nz

Councils beating the recession

The Western Bay of Plenty District Council District Plan (plan A) boasts a broad brush planning strategy. Unfortunately this has been overtaken by a recession and it is now time for a plan B.

Canterbury has had a double whammy with the earthquake. Probably the only good thing for them at the moment is that they are already moving quickly towards their plan B. By the time the rest of the country catches up with them they will be the capital of New Zealand. Bob Parker, the Mayor of Christchurch, emphasises every day that his people have to reach out to each other, talk to each other and listen. Christchurch will develop a new image born out of people talking and working together under strong leadership.

What have we bought?

I was disappointed with Mayor Ross Patterson's last notice board offering where he did acknowledge a recession, but blamed most of his problems on reduced contributions from developers needed to repay debt on his current SmartGrowth inspired infrastructure projects. He quotes $94m dollars is spent on this infrastructure out of the current $140m debt but four months ago, the CEO of WBOPDC indicated that a debt of over half of the then $130m debt was spent on Omokoroa alone expecting a projected population increase in Omokoroa from 2000 to 12000 residents. Katikati library looks like a white block of chocolate in the centre of the $6.5m town plan. Omokoroa appears to be a white elephant. The only good thing about Katikati is that the library isn't built it yet but the Omokoroa white elephant is mainly in place and is being paid for out of our rates.

The crystal ball gets even murkier

The revised SmartGrowth projection last week indicates no restoration of the growth rate that would be needed to rescue these projects. I hoped that the council's new Community Participation Committee boasting of local solutions for local issues would be the start of a closer relationship between council and the community. One councillor believes that the committee will be working on business partnerships with local businesses and organisations but no one else had any idea. Most hadn't read the late agenda item. Cr Mayo was challenged again for daring to place a discussion document on the table. He believed this was necessary because of the urgency that was being demanded and the lack of any explanatory documentation. The only council discussion revolved around Cr Mayo's right to expect any discussion and he was challenged on the authorship of his handwritten document. This personal attack politics was sufficient to intimidate the new councilors and they passed the motion without wanting to know anything about the purpose of the committee at all. This does not bode well for the other topic the mayor raised; The mayor's invitation to consider his annual plan for the Bay which will probably be passed by the same compliant unquestioning council. There was a suggestion that some councilors didn't bother voting against it because they knew it was all going to blow up when the public heard of the new council rates levies.

Community focus?

It actually doesn't matter whether this new committee is dealing with partnerships with local organisations or talking with local people using the Bob Parker leadership model. I didn't get it quite right last week. The new committee is from Kaimai with Omokoroa as its only Western Bay centre. These wards have no business or commercial centres and in the case of Omokoroa, virtually no residents. Residents from all of the main centres Katikati, Waihi and TePuke are not represented at all. Omokoroa problems will be well to the fore and there will be no need for the committee to talk to anyone else.

My dad was fond of an ornament we had in our house. It was a representation of a procession of ivory elephants each holding the tail of the one in front. I never knew if that was for protection, infrastructure development by the first elephant or just the elephant equivalent of pecking order. But then, it was only an ornament.