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

TCC annual three year/10 year draft plan is out for your review and consultation.

It is a broad draft of what elected members and/or staff consider could be done with your money (and permission) over the term of the plan. In reality it's a three year only proposal because it all gets another going over in three years' time. So I'm encouraging ratepayers to have a look at it, if not in details then at least the broad principles.

Left field

Take a left field approach for something different and tell elected members what you don't want. It's a given for most ratepayers that you don't want rates increases. So what do you want to drop off to hold rates? Selling off assets to pay down debt seems an option? Or selling assets to facilitate and stimulate new economic opportunities? Interest payments alone make up 16.6% of your rates bill. That's what I have been opposing for my time at Council. You can't keep borrowing for non core, non self funding services and keep rates down. Central Government requirements and the Resource Management Act impose significant rating dollars too. Are you as a community prepared to dispose of the swimming pools as an example? (I'm not proposing that!) If someone else were to take over the pools and the debt, it would enable a rates reduction of around 2%. But just to break even the new owner would have to increase admission charges by around 70%.

Maintenance

Council has tried less maintenance on reserves and sports fields. You didn't like that and Council soon reverted to usual maintenance. Increased user fees and charges on sports fields was hugely unpopular. Likewise a proposal for a 50 cent recreational book charge at the Library. Maybe it's time to revise across the board all those hitherto sacred cows?

Ratepayer funding to Priority One, Tourism BOP, Budget Advisory Service, Art Gallery, Creative Tauranga, Foodbank to name a few of many community organisations receiving ratepayers money. If this community funding was chopped your rates would drop a bit (I haven't done the maths) but would you be prepared to accept the loss of service? Not individually, because there will always be favourites, but across the board. The point to consider is that it is possible to significantly reduce rates if you are prepared to accept significant reduction in services across the board, sell assets and pay debt or produce income, lean heavily on Central Government to reduce its demands on ratepayers.

Elected members have been leaning heavily on the Chief Executive, for years now, to produce internal savings. There is some headway but its slow going. The reason for this is the way the Government has structured Local Government. Council has only one employee and that is the CEO. The CEO is then charged with doing Councils bidding, via its annual plan, and the CEO is the one who decides what resources are needed to implement that plan. Add to that the thousand and one items that crop up unexpectedly during the year and you can get an inkling of why the reluctance to trim resources. Put simply it's extremely hard to say 'No.” Politically it can be suicide! So can putting up your rates to enable a 'Yes”. So however you decide to do it I ask you for your input into the proposed plan. Elected members do take it all in, and despite popular urban myth to the contrary, your opinion and view does make a difference. Historically no plan has ever been agreed without major change.

Major change

Talking about major change, this week's new Minister for Local Government is David Carter, presently Minister for Primary Industries. He is the Member for Port Hills in Christchurch and is a farmer. Hopefully his will be a steady hand on proposed Local Government reforms, and will recognise that Government's hand on Local Government needs reform too. Local Government is not all bad and have I ever mentioned the rating system imposed by Central Government needs reform too!

Coming up this week is the Joint Governance Committee meeting between TCC and Western Bay. Among items for discussion is creation of parks like McLaren Falls being made sub regional. Huharua (Plummers Point) and TECT park (Pyes Pa) are jointly funded and it works well. In fact when you look at our joint operations it's a pretty good model of cooperation and from the Mount's takeover of Tauranga in 1989 it's hard to see any savings at all from a 'super-city-county”.

At Strategy and Policy Committee elected members discussed Street Use and Public Places Bylaw review. All pedestrian stuff (no pun intended) to enable you to go about your business without unnecessary restraint. 'Offensive” behaviour is to be grounds for requiring permission. Good luck on that one. What's offensive to some isn't to others. The police aren't that interested and only act upon complaint. I call it the 'Steve Crow” clause. If the local paper would ignore Mr Crow and his self promotion few would know it was on. Council could once again phase all the traffic lights green and the whole shebang (so to speak) would be gone in a matter of minutes.

Next week Council will be holding a confidential meeting on the matter of Tauranga City Aquatics (TCAL) and the way to the future. Once again it's been a slow process but that's how the law demands it. Decisions made will be released only as this process allows taking into account legal requirements. I'll keep you up to date.

This week's mindbender from Plato – 'wise people talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”