Cr Bill Faulkner Faulkners Corner www.sunlive.co.nz

It's been heavy going at city hall this week with full council meetings overlapping three year/Ten Year Plan discussions
and debate.

All the big spend-ups by yesteryear councils, no matter how well intentioned, foundered on the rocks of reality this week when council unanimously formally addressed the shortfall in development contributions (DCs).

DCs are funds collected from new buildings and houses which cause demand for new infrastructure. They are an integral part of funding new services, amenities and facilities. Take Baywave, DC funding was $2,753,829. Transparent rates funding was $6,690,642. Smoke and mirrors loan from TECT now repaid is now a ratepayer loan of $4 million (smoke and mirrors was not TECT's doing). Total cost of Baywave was $19,393,165 – the original concept presented to council was under $10,000,000 from memory.

So when you don't collect DCs you still have to pay the interest and debt repayment.

If the money doesn't come in, the amount compounds. Council can only charge DCs on the estimated cost and there has been significant under collection in the equation as well. It's all history now and that was how some past elected members must have viewed things: buy now, while the going's good and let those who come after us figure out how to address the financial noose we are putting around the city's neck.

The brigade is back

A few of us opposed a lot of this expenditure and copped plenty of flak from the ‘wants, needs and deserves' brigade. Thank goodness, for example, that the waterfront museum didn't go ahead. Independent estimates had it costing over $35 million as opposed to those promoting it at costing ‘only' $21 million. Operational expenditure would likely have been $3-4 million or another 3-4 per cent on your rates – plus council would have exceeded its $400 million debt envelope. So now this council faces the legacy with another $26 million in DC shortfalls to add to ratepayer cost as it transfers from the DC accounts. Contrary to the Bay Times headline this is not added to city debt. It is already a debt that is being transferred to another account. This will add around another 3.1 (including debt retirement) not two per cent as reported in the Bay Times, to your rates. Might be less, might be more, but at this point it is council's intention to err on a minimalist estimate and hope things pick up.

Nothing's best

Council is doing double flips backwards by comparison to yesteryear in attempting to facilitate new development and reduced West Bethlehem DCs from around $40,000 per section to $17,500 on a graduated scale. There is $10 million in infrastructure sitting in the ground out there eating its head off in compounding interest and hardly any income to pay it. ‘Incentivising' is what someone called it. The option is to do nothing which guarantees nothing will happen.

Future in the books

The library operation came under scrutiny and some hard calls have to be made for future expenditure. Greerton will likely get another upgrade, but it looks as if the new building will have to be delayed once more. Some interesting numbers in the library operation: costs over $8 million to operate; $1.4 million in book and magazine purchases. There are two ‘readers' who read books and decide what to buy. 51,000 members of whom 8000 (16 per cent) live in Western Bay. They make no direct contribution to operational costs. This is estimated at around $1 million subsidy. (By the way the same applies to the Aquatics Network). To be fair, 1000 city residents belong to the Western Bay libraries at Katikati and Te Puke. The Mobile Library will remain. Staff were asked to seriously pursue external funding, sponsorship and donations. The Mobile Library services some schools at ratepayer's expense because the Government won't provide sufficient funding for their libraries. In fact, we were told, they are cutting back on it.

Jazz fest argy-bargy

A bit of argy-bargy between Murray Guy and Larry Baldock over reported comments Murray admits he made on SunLive. Larry took Murray to task under standing orders where ‘members are not to be disrespectful'. Murray's comment: 'it's a damn shame it has to be soured by those elected members who have chosen to try and circumvent the rules.” I was there and from my perspective that is not true. Larry said he took offence and as such asked Mayor Stuart Crosby to ask Murray to withdraw those comments and apologise. Murray refused. Mayor Stuart is to talk to each of them and then make a ruling.

This was in regard to a $30,000 grant and a $90,000 loan made to the Jazz Festival by the events support sub committee. Murray disagreed with the process and decision which is supposed to be a confidential discussion with only the outcome being made public. After debate, council confirmed the funding, but will urgently review the whole event funding policy.

The idea of event funding is a hand-up to organisations to assist in stimulating events in our city. It's not meant to be a hand out and in these times some organisations are depending on council/ratepayer support.

On other matters, the next council elections will be undertaken with a First Past the Post voting system again. Tauranga Dog Training Club will stay on Moreland Fox Park. Elected members expressed surprise that there had been such an effort to move them on as a response to a very few documented complaints.

A leaky fix

On a split vote council/ratepayers will opt in to the government's leaky home fix scheme. In my opinion some homeowners would be wise to look at all options rather than hanging their hats on this as the solution. Government has skidded out from under this one – it will recoup its 25 per cent in taxes and GST. Very cunning. And it was government agreement to change legislation which caused the problem in my opinion.

An annual process of confirming the year's borrowings of $183,899,537 exceeded previous debate time records. This year it extended to two minutes 20 seconds for a question and 20 seconds to pass it. Ah, such is the way of democracy. The smaller the issue the longer the time it takes to decide. Grenada Park is to be renamed Arataki Park.

This week's mind bender/one liner comes from Mayor Stuart Crosby responding to my comments on the complainant in the Dog Training Club debate. I said that for the few times a year they used the park he could arrange to go away. If you lived by a public park you had to expect noise. Stuart responded 'That's a bit rough.”
Much hilarity ensued.