Elected members and staff met with City Gym owners this week to discuss concerns raised by gym owners during the annual/10 year plan submission round they were affected by unfair competition from the gym at Baywave called In Shape.

As one of four elected members who did not support ratepayer subsidy for Baywave, I'm in a position to offer objective comment. Tauranga City Aquatics Ltd (TCAL) now operates the pool network for council. Some of the pool network is financial dogs but provides service to the community, albeit at a huge subsidy. This subsidy comes from income generated by the whole network, including In Shape gym. The gym owners say it is unfair In Shape memberships include access to Baywave pools, saunas etc. This access, if purchased separately, costs about $500. Gym membership is listed at $1047 retail but apparently there are deals to be had, although with the demise of Lesiureco who were running the pools and In Shape, we weren't privy to the detail.

Pool talk
So ratepayers don't subsidise pool operations – just the loan on Baywave. If, as the gym owners suggested, the In Shape gym was separated out as a single business then the rest of the pools might not be an attractive business proposition to a private operator. We might end up back where we came from, heaven forbid, with council running them with a big ratepayer subsidy. Options to be considered by TCAL for recommendation are do nothing, remove Baywave access from In Shape membership, or allow access to all gym memberships at an equal cost across the board.
TCAL chairman Warren Banks said some of the discussion tended towards price fixing. He had a point. In a competitive industry it would or could be an easy way to pick off one of your major competitors by political interference. That's why council isn't running the pools any more. From where I sit, I think everyone has a point to make and we will work through issues to a compromise – that will not include ratepayer subsidy for operations. This could be tantamount to a ratepayer subsidy – indirectly – to private gym owners.

Water Costs
While on the subject of water, I attended a presentation by the private (monopoly) water supplier to Auckland city, Metrowater, on issues they face, including water wastage, loss, pricing and profit. As a private company they are required to return a profit to their owner - Auckland City Council. They charge $1.47 a cubic metre (our price $1.40 a cubic metre) (1000 litres). Auckland has volumetric charging on its wastewater, charging $3.50 a cubic metre on 70 per cent of its water meter bills. We have looked at it and will again in the future. It's user payers, sort of, in that if there is a large garden use you might be unfairly charged. But it's even more unfair to charge a flat rate to people living on their own; the same as a family situation of four or six people. It won't come up for a while – (election year next year) as this sort of thing makes some elected members nervous. An interesting comment during this presentation was that Auckland had no community spirit, just a group of suburbs looking for a city. They might get one, soon and, I suspect, more than they bargained for.

Coastal plans
More meetings and discussions on the District Plan Review. Of such little interest that media infrequently show up, apart from the radio man, so you won't be kept up with detail. To most in the community, planning is an expensive, boring aspect of council but it can have a major impact. If you don't follow it, it's too late after the event. This week the designation line on the coastal strip was recommended to be moved out 11 metres for the draft plan review. The consultant, who seemed to know what he was talking about, told us the coastal strip was accreting, that is, growing wider. He also told us the sea was getting higher. Since records were kept from 1898 the sea had risen around 1.5mm to 4mm a year. I asked how the measurements were taken, against what data line and how did they measure, whether or not the land sinking. He had intelligent answers but agreed it wasn't all, not in my words a best guess but an educated guess. By the way, the sea level is now measured at Moturiki (Rabbit Island) on a minute by minute basis by a gas operated recording device. Dumping 80,000 cubic metres of sand from harbour dredging off the Mount's main beach provided unnatural beach replenishment. I noted we didn't get the violent storms we used to get in the 50s and 60s, to which he agreed. But as he said, we deal with the situation we've got now.

What's in a street name?
Discussion on new street names as the city grows. Mayor Stuart Crosby and I said we risk losing some of our city's past by not prioritising names of local significance. For instance, how many of you know where the Triangle was or is? Or the real Faulkner's Corner? Palm Beach, Royal Palm Beach and all those so-called exotic names risk eclipsing local identities like Papamoa. We will encourage names of local significance, both European and Maori, and staff will report back. By the way, the Triangle is the bottom of Devonport Road/Strand, where it used to intersect with Spring Street before Red Square was created.
Faulkner's Corner is the 11th Ave/Cameron Road when the Faulkners had a store and shops where McDonalds now is. Bishara's Service Station opposite Shell was the main intersection in town.

No traffic lights were needed then, although there were plenty of prangs.
No headlines on elected members' incomes this year as no salary increase was gazetted. Some even took a reduction. This might indicate a not too objective motivation on the part of media specialising in sensationalisation. Oh dear. After a lot of hoopla, including a front page story complete with photo of Councillor Hayden Evans, flourishing his cheque book as he paid his outstanding rates of nearly $10,000. The cheque bounced. Hayden blamed his accountant and the cheque was to be presented again this week. Watch for the next exciting episode.