Richard Moore for Mayor and Mount Maunganui-Papamoa Ward

Why Tauranga needs to change its council

16/8/2013

Tauranga City Council is tired and seems unable to come up with ideas to turn the city's spiralling debt around.

Its members have been there for too long and have lost touch with the citizens of our city.

I want to see more transparency in council decision making and processes and I believe council should be more open with its citizens.

Council meetings should be at night, so more people can attend, and important information should be more readily available.

There are many examples of them not listening to residents.

Here are just some of them ...

Emergency sirens

Emergency sirens for the coastal areas of Papamoa and the Mount are prime examples.

We have been calling for the sirens since 2005 and council ignored our safety concerns.

The Japanese earthquake and subsequent tsunami that killed 16,000 people did wake our council up for a brief moment but then they went back to sleep.

When they finally did make a decision they picked a siren system that was expensive and not suited - against the wishes of Papamoa residents (and myself) who had been demanding cheaper and more effective air-raid sirens.

That little debacle cost ratepayers $190,000 and we were back to square one.

More Exits

Papamoa residents have also been long ignored in their calls for more roads out of the suburb. We effectively have two roads leading inland along a strip of coast 16km long.

As recently as August 12 one of the local members Cr Wayne Moultrie rejected more roads saying they were too expensive.

Surely the lives of 20,000 Papamoa residents are worth saving in an emergency.

I have made frequent calls in my columns for a higher priority to be given to increasing egress from Papamoa but all we hear is deafening silence from Town Hall.

Greerton Library

Since 2003 Friends of the Tauranga City Libraries have been pushing to get a new library in Greerton. The current one is old and for 45,000 people, or 36% of Tauranga's population, their local library is 8% of the city's total library floor area.

Finally on April 22 2013 the Council agreed, in a 7-4 vote to build a 900m2, brand new, $3.2 million library at Greerton using the $1.8m development contributions plus the proceeds of the sale of the Subway block of shops and land and the proceeds of the Plunket land and houses.

Just six weeks later, on June 4 2013, they voted, in a 7-4 vote, to cancel the project.

The reason given was the money had to go for stormwater works. Another was libraries were not a priority of the council and, according to the Friends of the Libraries, during the debate one councillor called building a library ''frivolous''.

Not only is that not listening, in my opinion that is showing contempt for residents and going back on your word.

It is another sign of the arrogance of being in office too long.

Route K

Nothing sums up this council's inmability to listen more than the unbelievable foul-up that is Route K.

When council came up with the idea they were told in no uncertain terms by a local group that the route would never be a success. They were ignored.

So, too, was the New Zealand Transport Agency, which told Tauranga City Council not to build the toll road.

The council went ahead with the project which, to date, has given the city a growing debt of $60 million.

Councillors have long bleated the NZTA should take it off council hands but the agency, quite sensibly, isn't in the mood to.

Ta ta $60+ million.

Bell Rd landbanking

Tauranga council borrow $10 million to land bank 171 ha of land owned previously by two farmers. In a deal that can only be described as insanely generous the city's ratepayers pay interest on the loan, but will be reimbursed by the farmers if they take up option to rebuy the property.

They don't need to until 2026.

In the meantime ratepayers are facing an ever-rising bill as the interest owed is not being paid, but rather is being tacked on to the original loan.

Now if the farmers want to buy the land it may well cost them a whopping $60 million.

But then, they can't be forced to and so ratepayers will be left with the debt ... again.

Love to know who okayed that little deal!

Mount Hot Pools

The Mount Hot Pools saga is yet another example of wasting public money and not listening to what people were saying.

Against very vocal local opposition Tauranga City Aquatics Ltd - a council-controlled organisation - wanted to expand the hot pools to include a $7.5 million Wellness Centre.

TCAL refused to listen to anyone over the matter and It was only stopped by a decision at the resource consent stage.

However, a several million dollar refurbishment was conducted instead - only it sort of missed some fairly large leaking pipes that were wasting 50,000 litres of water daily. It took more money being tipped down the drain before the issue was fixed, however rcently even more money has been spent on machinery to keep the water at a consistent temperature.

Rena Cleanup

During the Rena Disaster I was down at the Mount Beach when the first drops came in and helped in that cleanup. Following that I spent hundreds of hours photographing all aspects of the disaster - from when oil washed ashore on the Mount and Papamoa beaches, to the cleanup of wildlife and containers washing ashore at Waihi Beach.

In my time I did not see one councillor down on the sands cleaning up.

They may have been there and I would happily name all of those who let me know what they did.

Contact Richard Moore by email on richard@richardmoore.com.