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

Western Bay Council's District Plan took four years of consultation and development. The three-year rewrite cycle of the 10-year Long Term Council Community Plan is written to community outcomes, which do not belong to the council but are the district's community outcomes. In 2010, the title LTCCP was simplified and renamed the Long Term Plan.

It was just a name change but, in effect, communities became further removed from the councils' planning processes. Local Government warned councils recently to stop mis-using their LTPs as convenient hooks for pushing agendas and hiding grandiose projects. The annual planning rounds, just finished, are supposed to be the annual minor tweaking of the LTCCPs – and should be nothing more than a chance for the public to see how well council planning is going. For many, it is the first chance for us to understand what the council is actually doing; and how much it is going to cost ratepayers. This year's WBOPDC annual plan was very revealing – and the council's response to submissions betray how little they understand modern, council-community relationship practices of collaboration.

Major plan rewrites should not be part of an annual plan. Two-thirds of submissions were from Waihi Beach, where three years ago the Local Government Commission identified problems that were the result of poor communication between council and the town. Waihi Beach now has the highest rates in the country – outside of Auckland and Wellington – and believes it has been short-changed by Council. The council is working now to address issues raised in the annual plan that have never been addressed properly in previous planning.

The Katikati Town Centre Plan is a good example of a council shuffling targets, for its own agenda, on to LTPs. The council wanted a new library with council offices. Nothing at all was shown to the public of how this would work. All the town knew was that the cost was going on the rates. The TCP was offered as an interim measure, before the new bypass came in. The bypass was needed 50 years ago and could still be another 50 years away. There is no Katikati Comprehensive Development Plan. That has been deferred until after council gets what it wants in the town centre. The public was consulted three years ago – and the new library was 13^th on their priority list for the town. But the council pressed ahead and bought the library site. Council now has no money – and its recent appeal to the regional council, for a grant to press ahead with their council offices plan, was turned down. The council is still determined to build their offices – and despite submissions every year from the public – is still determined to start work straight away. Their response to annual plan submissions indicates how far away a council can be from their ratepayers.

Council's own Tauranga Harbour Recreation Forum asked, for the fourth time, that the council's all-tide boat ramp project at Kauri Point be revisited. The council's plan made no sense to the people of Katikati or local Maori – and in council's reply it acknowledges the continuing opposition since 2002. But it's decided to go ahead and spend more money on consultation to try and find anyone that agrees with their planning. Their response is an amazing admission of a council totally ignoring community outcomes. Again, against Local Government instruction, they are using the LTP to defer and hide their personal projects.

After five years of submissions to council, I can understand why many see the process as a waste of time. But the submission process to the various plans is the last window we have on council's hidden planning. Election time, a chance to have our say, is not our last chance for exercising our democratic rights. If we don't' care who they are, and what they are doing – we may as well not bother voting and just keep paying our rates.