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

Let's lay a hoary old council ‘chestnut' to rest once and for all. When things get quiet on the council controversy front, upon which certain media feed, the reporters revert to ‘ye olde faithfuls' in order to fill their ‘sensational' requirements.

Council ‘conducts too much business in secret' or whatever angle they take to have you believe you are not being informed of what is being done or how it is being done.

The daily media were at it again this week, this time by a reporter who rarely if ever has attended a council meeting writing that 'Council should get more open debate and not make so many decisions hidden behind closed doors.”

So I asked staff to come up with the facts – something reporters avoid when perpetrating myths.

It transpires that 371 reports were considered by council in the past 12 months of which only 36 were considered in ‘public excluded' – that's 335 done publicly.

Of these 36, most were made public after the transaction was concluded – these exact figures are still being researched. That's hardly 'so many decisions” is it?

Any reports still in confidential will be there solely to protect council's legal position or an individual's right to privacy. It's simple really. You mightn't want you business splattered all over the paper would you?

Featuring warm fuzzies

On this subject, council considered the matter of its contractual obligations to Rugby World Cup. Presentations were made in the open section of the meeting by various agencies and business representatives to tell of the benefit to Tauranga by having association with the RWC and hosting three teams in training.

Terry Molloy said that having three teams here for 14 days meant 150 people at $200 a day. It was important that visitors left our city with a warm fuzzy feeling and talked about Tauranga in glowing terms, were the comments from some. But others noted that there were no games played here and there was a duty of care to protect ratepayers from excess expenditure. The outcome from the confidential discussion which centred around contractual matters with RWC was that Tauranga would participate on the basis of being ‘a good host'. Once the details of the contract obligations have been quantified and priced, details will be public. Obviously you don't make your pre negotiation position known publicly before you have conducted the negotiations. The cost will be rigorously controlled and budget will come from within existing budgets. To those of you who are adept at reading between the lines you will get the message.

Unsatisfactory

As I noted last week, elected members were only made aware of the existence of this contract a couple of weeks ago. It seems there was a ‘systemic failure' that ensured elected members were unaware of proceedings. Indeed some key senior staff that should have been in the loop weren't. a most unsatisfactory state of affairs that council is now in and the mission now is to resolve the situation amicably and responsibly. I'll let you know details as soon as the details are agreed and confirmed.

Grants for good

A bit of good news – three organisations have attracted $88,900 total in lottery grants to stage entertainment events in our city over RWC period. Submissions to annual plan are closed and are now being collated. Had an interesting comment from one submitter who said he had relatives in Christchurch and he suggested to ask them if they want water, sewerage etc or art galleries, libraries etc as a priority spend of their rates money. It sometimes takes a crisis to highlight where a city's priorities really lie.

Long term pay offs

At projects and monitoring committee, elected members considered the 290 page two-monthly monitoring report where staff report on how things are going and how the budget to annual plan estimates are lining up. It's looking okay at present.

As predicted in the data assembled for the Southern Pipeline, city wastewater pipes are starting to overflow in storm events as stormwater floods into the wastewater system.

Part of the Southern Pipeline function will be to allow wastewater flows to be rearranged and/or diverted in order to prevent overloads in areas prone to flooding.

In response to questions, staff said that our record of sewerage overflows ranked Tauranga as one of the best in the world – meaning that it was very low by comparison. By the way a survey showed that nine per cent of you think stormwater is treated before discharge, 44 per cent think it is untreated and 47 per cent are unsure or don't know! These stats demonstrate a significant percentage of our community takes little or no interest in the provision of basic infrastructure and items like water, sewerage and stormwater are taken for granted. Council and the education system need to improve people's basic knowledge of what goes on.

Bars behaving badly

The police gave a brief snapshot of crime in Tauranga. This year they will target theft from cars, methamphetamine and alcohol, and violence and disorder. Alcohol related incidents take 30 per cent of police resource. A couple of high profile Strand bars feature as numbers one and two for New Zealand in alcohol related incidents.

Police are working with them to improve things. Over at the Mount police are opposing a bar licence renewal.

This week's mind bender – particularly related to all things government and attributed to anonymous: ‘Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.'