Councillors voted that the CEO was to disclose financial information about Tauranga City Aquatics Ltd by Oct-2009, that has failed to materialise to date. Now available online at the Council website is the draft annual report to Jun-2010 showing a loss of $4.222 million for the year.
Included in this loss are 'Grants of $895,000” that presumably come from ratepayers and that makes the loss look a little better, but not really.
In total ratepayers look to have paid in cash $4,867,000 as 'grants” into providing aquatics facilities for just one year to 'shore up” the losses made.
The report shows $3,004,000 as 'payments to employees”.
Meanwhile a glossy pamphlet prints that 'surpluses have been reinvested back into the Aquatics network”. It would seem that the marketing people have not been told about where all the money has come from nor gone to?
The truth is that aquatics facilities and there peripheral so called 'commercial” activities continue to make substantial losses every year (if they did make a profit some how then full disclosure would be made available to anyone who asked) that ratepayers are being asked to pay for, the facilities are being expanded exponentially and the only result that will come of this is even bigger losses.
IL Stevenson, Tauranga.

TCC responds:
'The pools en masse do not make a ‘profit'. Rates have always been used to bridge the gap. This is fully disclosed.
The amount provided in rates to TCAL in the last year was $1.44 million (of which $857,000 was retained by Tauranga City Council to fund future renewal works). As Mr Stevenson, chartered accountant, will no doubt be aware, a change in accounting standards led to a deferred tax adjustment of $3 million. The operational loss was $89,000 out of a budgeted expenditure of $5.9 million.
No additional rates funding, above what was approved in the Annual Plan, has been provided to TCAL.”