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

Elected members had a marathon nine and a quarter hour meeting session on Monday. The full council agenda wasn't that big – only 231 pages, but there were some issues that created lengthy debate.

The lengthy debate was strung out by one councillor who seems to occupy 50 per cent of the speaking time.

Relaxed application of standing orders makes for a free flow of ideas and opinions, but it is also open to being taken advantage of and this has developed markedly in the past year. Meetings starting at 12pm and finishing at 9.15pm may not be the best way forward if one person is dominating debate who is not the chairman.

Clubhouse kept

First item was 80 minutes on the Mount Cricket and Hockey Society clubhouse at Blake Park.

Their lease runs out in 2019 and members want to stay and not be part of the new Cricket Pavilion approved for Blake Park.

Ratepayers are putting up some $500,000 for public toilets and changing facilities as part of this new building and the two organisations (Mount Cricket and Hockey, and BOP Cricket) were to come to an agreement over the new format.

Their respective management negotiations did reach agreement, but Mount Cricket and Hockey Society rank and file members rejected this agreement.

They want to remain on their patch.

After much discussion, council agreed to a year-by-year extension to the lease from its 2019 expiry. This will have an effect on development plans for the future of Blake Park.

Tolls going up

Route K tolls will increase from January 1, 2012, to $1.50 for cars and heavy vehicles to $5.

There will be a free tolling period in February for traffic modelling purposes.

This is all part of government and The Agency's requirements leading up to the expected/anticipated takeover hopefully June 30 next year.

As part of the plan, a proposal to put $300,000 traffic lights in at the Elders Lane/Moffat Road intersection was lost, but I asked for investigation of a solution to the Cambridge Road state highway intersection at Tauriko, which can be a real shambles at times.

Freedom camping less free

New rules surrounding ‘freedom campers' were adopted by majority vote.

Catherine Stewart moved for the status quo which was lost.

There are pressure spots that need effective enforcement responses and the new rules provide these.

Up to three vehicles may park overnight at Memorial Park, Greerton Park, Fergusson Park, Marine Park and Waikareao Foreshore Reserve.

There will not be a proliferation of signs banning ‘freedom camping' and tickets will be issued as a last resort.

Note – in January there were up to 20 mobile homes at a time at Marine Park and one stayed over three weeks. The mower had to mow around it!

Time for talk

Tauranga is to join in another talk fest – this time the ‘Upper North Island Strategic Alliance', an amalgam of Hamilton, Whangarei, Auckland and Tauranga local and regional councils.

Hopefully it will produce something more than most local government talkfests.

Everyone feels good and has a catch-up at these occasions, but rarely produce anything effective for ratepayers.

Who was the boob?

In the confidential section of the meeting, council decided by majority not to pursue prosecution of Steve Crowe and his Boobs on Bikes parade. Lengthy debate (again), but Mr Crowe had already been pursued in Auckland and had won.

The law deems this not offensive. You could have a go on technicalities but as Terry Molloy very wisely noted that when you wrestle with a pig you both get dirty and the pig loves it.

Hamilton City just ignored Mr Crowe this year and without attendant media attention apparently the matter just faded away.

As I have noted before this was just a made-to-order free publicity campaign for Mr Crowe and local daily print media fell for it. More fool them.

Hot Pools debate ends

Mount Hot Pools' proposed expansion is all over. The upgrade of plant and machinery is nearly finished and that will be it. Fallout for TCAL will be significant.

TCAL, which runs the aquatic network has done a good job up to the Mount Hot Pools saga in my opinion, but they dropped the ball spectacularly and expensively on this one.

Some elected members were disappointed as the plan evolved that despite repeated assurances that matters like parking were in hand, in fact they weren't.

The appeal to the Environment Court is stopped.

Mobile library off track

At other meetings the three year/Ten Year Plan continued. A proposal to can the Mobile Library Service if a sponsor cannot be found will make some $250,000 available to plough into other more effective library resources.

It seems that 45 per cent of this service is to schools which pay nothing for the service even though the government makes provision in their funding for a school library service. Because school funding is inadequate, schools simply don't have the money to pay, but ratepayers do not have a responsibility to this either.

It's just another example of government dodging their responsibilities and off loading onto councils/ratepayers, says Wayne Moultrie.

This is not a cost cutting exercise, but an attempt to better use money within the library service.

Some wag suggested that Steve Crowe be approached for sponsorship – books on bikes.

Museum site in circles

The Museum Trust, a private group set up to pursue a museum for Tauranga, made a presentation to council.

They had requested it be held in confidential so that their business plan could be discussed.

The business plan includes proposals for grants and donations from organisations yet to be approached, which is why it needed to be in confidential, but Murray Guy and others wanted it in open.

The affect of this was that the business plan couldn't be discussed.

This in turn meant that council/ratepayers' part in this – provision of a consented museum site had to be tagged.

I moved that any such provision be made subject to staff analysis on the robustness of the business case.

So all that came out of the presentation was that they preferred the Cliff Road site and we will have yet another meeting to discuss the business case.

This week's mind bender from Albert Einstein: 'If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you don't understand it yourself.”