Harbourlink, the new harbour bridge, viaduct and interchange opens officially this Friday December 18. Back in 2004 it was being suggested that we would be lucky to be driving on it by 2010.

Thanks to a stunning effort by all involved – Fletchers, Transit – now 'the Agency” – and sub-contractors the project is well ahead and well under budget – some $29m– in an open book profit/loss share contract.
Unfortunately the political architect of this essential road network has been snubbed by officialdom. Make no mistake but this was and is the legacy left by Winston Peters. At the official beginning of the project then Minister Annette King graciously said as much in her speech. In an unforgivable deliberate snub Winston Peters has not been invited to the opening. I understand the official invitation list was compiled by New Zealand Transport Agency – 'the Agency”. A total of 79 people including former Mayor Noel Pope and myself were included, but not Winston. There are times when political imperatives need to be set aside and this is one of them. If the official excuse is 'there has to be a cut off point” as has been quoted then Winston could have my invitation as I am unable to attend. But of course that's not the real reason – just a pathetic PC excuse. Had Winston not stepped up to the mark I think that with the wisdom of hindsight and financial upheavals since, that this project was beyond Council's financial resources? Certainly at the very least the limits on Council's fiscal envelope of $400m would have been well and truly blown.
It's like the architect of the Sydney Opera House who also ran foul of officialdom and never set foot in the finished product and now everybody is so sorry.
A plague on political correctness, petty political grievances and officialdom's temerity. And for the record I am not a member of Winston's Party and have no motivation other than to give credit where it's due.

Misreporting
I see that the Bay Times misreported the decision by Council's hearings committee and then had a correcting article a few days later. It concerned an application from Perry Trust and their proposal to develop land around the Otumoetai Trust Hotel. No council reserve land is involved and this was eventually made clear. The decision in fact softened the impact the development might have compared to what was permitted under the District Plan. To make it clear, the decision by the Council Hearings Panel was in fact a responsible sensible outcome from what otherwise might have happened as allowed by the rules.

Rating system
I came across an interesting little side effect of our rating system the other day and it shows how insidious and intertwined the system is. Council pays itself $1,275,330 in rates ranging from $227,554 on pensioner housing down to stormwater reserves. Of course, apart from self funding property like pensioner units there is only one source of funding for Council expenditure and that's us, the ratepayers. That's around $25 per rateable property – including GST of around $160,000. Government doesn't need to increase the rate of GST when there are rorts like this in their systems, does it? Like ACC increases GST is a compounding giant – a tax on a tax.
Council oversees a couple of bequests on behalf of the Stewarts and Carruthers Trusts. The Stewarts Trust is for the relief of poverty in Tauranga and the Carruthers Trust is for essential maintenance on community owned pensioner housing. Money granted is from investments of bequests NOT rates money.

Homes of hope
In a unanimous decision Homes of Hope, a charitable operation that provides homes for children from dysfunctional backgrounds receives $400,000. A further $118,000 was set aside for a registered charity to pick up further funding from elsewhere to set up a shelter for homeless persons in Tauranga. $46,000 available from Carruthers Trust went to upgrading bathrooms for elderly tenants in pensioner units.

Bunfights
At Strategy and Policy the media, who were not in attendance again, missed a bunfight over a five hectare block of land at Papamoa that has had a Historic Places Trust (HPT) classification placed on it. In some cases this HPT business is compulsory state acquisition of land by stealth in my opinion. The HPT come with heavy hand and no money. In this case the staff proposal was to acquire the land by 'vesting” in Council – no cost for Council – but of course operational costs to maintain it. But the credibility of this 'historic” place was somewhat dented by HPT agreement that a road could be built right through the middle of it and a playground as well.

Historic value
With one councillor absent Chairman David Stewart was compelled to use his casting vote to force the vesting.
Concern centred on future neighbours demanding it be kept tidy. But hey, its historic value, we were told, is its natural sand dune form”. So I would have thought that inherent in that description was leave it alone, don't plant it, mow it, build a road through it or add a playground.
That's hardly preservation of an ancient Maori midden site adjacent to the swamp pa, is it? Just yet another stone around ratepayers' necks.