Andrew von Dadelszen Former Regional Councillor

Deliberations announced for the Regional Council's 10 Year Plan

I am hugely disappointed that the Bay of Plenty Regional Council's deliberations of their 10 Year Plan never appeared to address the issue of staffing levels.

As I commented in a previous editorial the huge blowout in non 'action orientated” staffing (planners, report writers and bureaucratic paper shufflers) is what is causing our rates blowout. Our regional councillors' solution is to pin the rates increase back by delaying actual environmental improvement initiatives, and make minimal inroads into improving efficiency and effectiveness.

That said I was pleased to see Chairman Cronin commenting that "we've also committed to savings of $750,000 over three years ($250,000 each financial year from Year Two - 2013/2014) by making permanent efficiencies in the way Council works".

How this will be done has not been identified, but at least it is a start in the right direction. Just reducing the rate take by deferring expenditure will not reduce the proposed rate increase (130 per cent over the 10 years), so councillors need to really work hard looking for permanent efficiency gains.

As I have said before, this won't happen unless staffing levels are addressed as part of this drive.

I was also pleased to see some detail of the proposed mangrove management programme in the deliberations paper.

I was concerned that there was no further additional mangrove clearance planned, but this does not appear to be the case. The table below details the proposed programme (which includes additional clearance of 30 hectares per year for each year in the 10 Year Plan.

This detail appeared to have been missing from the proposed plan, and its inclusion gives a level of comfort that we will continue to see affirmative action in reversing Tauranga Harbour's degradation.

If you have a view on these or any other local government issues, I invite you to email me at andrew@vond.co.nz , or visit www.vond.co.nz.