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COVID Lock Down Update

28/04/2020

life during house arrest

As we near the end of lock down (well, at least we are allowed takeaways – right?) I thought it a good opportunity to do a stock-take. Where are we at and what is going on in Council?

Besides which my Councillor update in Newsline that was supposed to go out in the last issue (after being bumped previously) was again bumped so that we could fit in a story about ex-mayor Kempthorne getting a medal, and an article about getting better fuel economy when driving. All highly urgent uses of space during the lockdown.

Important News from Tasman District Council during lockdown
With Fuel at record low levels and the use of vehicles banned we bring you … our top tips for better fuel economy .. to show you how relevant and caring we are as a Council.

Well most of what is going on in the Council is going on under the direction of the Mayor and CEO. On the odd occasion Councillors are invited to participate via “zoom.” 

Interestingly, the Council voted to run with a zero rate increase (excluding growth, and excluding fixed charges, and oh I am sure there will be other exclusions). This is interesting because the Councillors were all suddenly concerned about affordability issues for the ratepayers.

In the weeks leading up to lockdown we, the Council, approved millions of dollars of unbudgeted spend. This despite the dam blowing out again and the ratepayer now being the sole source of dam funding. Yet we kept piling on the unbudgeted spend as recommended by some staff that appear to be completely out-of-touch-with-reality or at least with the desperate situation that many of our rate-payers find themselves.

The compassion was short lived. We had the opportunity during a dam update to ask the question what it would look like if we shelved the project for the time being. Taking into account the huge blow outs in costs to the ratepayer, no certainty that we have seen the last of them, and a recession hitting our ratepayers hard in the next few months it seemed like a prudent action to make an informed decision. However, the majority of obviously wealthy councillors were not interested in at least finding out the cost of such a proposal.

Lets just proceed at any cost because Mike Scott said it would cost too much to stop the dam and we had to just complete it. Although Mike Scott cannot give us a price to finish the dam and has no idea what it would cost council to pause the contract. “The cost of last year’s drought would probably have paid for about half the dam” he says. But again, not knowing what half the price of the dam will be, and the fact that even our worst drought in recent memory the local GDP increased it is hard to take him seriously. He must be an expert because he has a hard hat on (although this is his first dam project).

Incidentally he is the same Mike Scott that said “We have done 15 bore logs in the area and know the geology very well.

And follows it up with: However, Mike Scott, the man in charge of the dam build near Nelson, said that, in his view, that risk was not fully contemplated or accommodated in the design of the dam.
“We had to change the design,” he said.

What is probably more annoying is that in the last dam update where we were informed of the dam design change to a synthetic membrane faced dam, instead of a concrete faced dam, I asked what would this $1million to $2million in savings do to the life span of the dam. I was told there would be no drop in longevity it would last 100 years.  In this last update we are now informed that the membrane lifespan would be 50 to maybe 100 years. Which indicates a significant drop in levels of service.

And to further cast doubt on the information Mr Scott is presenting, he confirms that the manufacturer warranty is only for 20 years. It doesn’t sound like a 100 year life product to me (but I don’t have a hard hat so what do I know).

Dr Nick Smith sulking
Photo credit NZ Herald

I know that we have appealed to the Government for more money (that way only the taxpayers will be hit in the pocket). It would seem that the honourable Dr Smith is too busy throwing tantrums about being irrelevant (after all COVID-19 is all about Dr Smith) to be much of an advocate, so I guess we are relying solely on the other half of the comedy duo to petition for money for we the Lotus eaters.

It is a good job that the irrigators who bought a share or two are happy subsidising the bigger operators. As this dam keeps escalating in costs those people with a few water shares and a high capital value properties are going to face eye watering rate increases. Not only from the WIL liability, but also for being in the zone of burden capital charges, and if they are hooked up to reticulated residential supplies it will be cheaper to drink petrol post COVID-19.

Of course, business as usual does not end there. Today we approved another $60,000 of unbudgeted spend to review our freedom camping bylaw. It is obvious that hoards of freedom campers are going to descend on Tasman from the heavens over the next 12 months to 2 years that we have to push this item forward with unbudgeted spend rather than put it through the normal channels of the Long Term Plan or Annual Plan processes. No doubt it will also require extra staff to be hired or contracted in as well.

Looking ahead to Thursday there is the recommendation that we Chlorinate our water supplies full time all the time. Another agenda being rushed through under urgency because our water supplies might suddenly develop COVID-19? No figures are attached to this report, but we can assume that a consultation will be upwards of $80,000. Again, all unbudgeted spend. Perhaps we can not do some maintenance to make headroom for it. I am sure there is some more water pipes in Wakefield due for renewal that we can “sweat” another 10 years.

I am looking forward to seeing a report on how we will achieve the (almost with numerous exclusions) zero rate increase – that alone will mean not delivering on budgeted projects. Continue to load up with unbudgeted spend. And, not increase our debt cap that several councillors and staff are desperate to push up.

In the meantime, stay safe in your bubble – unless you are the minister of health, then you can go to the beach, go mountain biking, and allegedly move house while under lockdown level 4. Or go fishing if you are the deputy PM. But get arrested if you are the guy who went hunting and isn’t a minister.

First published in Latvijas Avize, Latvia, March 17, 2020 | By Gatis Sluka

Filed Under: Projects, Spending, Your Say Tagged With: spending, Waimea dam

More From The TDC Twilight Zone

10/05/2019

The last opportunity to pass a Special Housing Accord (SHA) development in Tasman (before the Government change the rules) was turned down recently. Unfortunately, this was the only SHA where the developer was making some attempt to provide affordable housing.

The developer, the owner of a building company, was having trouble attracting staff because of the high cost of housing. A problem many other businesses in Tasman are facing. This started him on a journey of coming up with a development strategy to address the problem. He had a list of covenants to ensure that the houses would be cheaper and get into the hands of the right people. Covenants like no land sold to housing development companies but only to owner occupiers, a maximum size house rather than a minimum, not for resale for at least 3 years.

The land was about three hectares on the main road of hope – surrounded by houses. Services are already supplied to the gate with capacity for the proposed development.

It sounds like a no-brainer. Unfortunately,  on this day the application was turned down for submission to the crown.

FOR

McNamara

Turley

King

Sangster

Brown

 

ABSENT Ogilvie, Hawkes

AGAINST

Kempthorne

Mailing

Tuffnell

Wensley

Greening

Canton

Bryant

Arguments against the proposal varied from “it was sprung on us, we didn’t have time to properly consider it” to “it is rural one land and we must protect it.” These sound like valid arguments except for the fact that earlier in our term we were presented with and passed about a dozen SHA applications in one meeting with literally thousands of pages of accompanying literature. We had no time to digest them. The recent applicant, however, had emailed councillors months prior canvassing the idea and asking for our thoughts on the development. Obviously, some councillors don’t read emails.

This development lies in land currently zoned rural, however, it is too small to be profitable for most agricultural applications. It is highly likely there would be an influx of complaints to council from their neighbours if they decided to farm it in a manner that might be profitable: too much noise, we are getting spray drift, or there is too much dust.

One Councillor suggested afterwards that they might put glass houses on their land to make it more profitable. A person could put glass houses on the Richmond mall carpark – prime horticulture land is not required for that.

Incidentally, the majority of those councillors who voted against this proposal were the ones that voted in favour of developing vast tracts of rural zoned land in lower Queen Street. Land that was prime horticulture land. Land that is located directly across the road from the region’s heavy industry. Land that we are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars providing infrastructure to.

Where were the concerns of those Councillors that day?

In the Council meeting on Thursday 9.05.19, we began to see the impact of over-committing our budget on the Waimea Dam. The Engineering department are coming to us with a work program that is about 30% under delivered on. Projects that they are currently trying to complete have contractor quotes greatly in excess of the budgets allocated.

Previously, when faced with a budget deficit staff come to the Council table and ask for more money. But now they must come to us with projects that they wish to drop or delay to cross allocate the funding because the Council is projected to hit the $200 million debt cap ceiling.

It is bad enough that people who have been waiting for years to get infrastructure upgrades, or to get infrastructure supplied, are now finding that the wait is not over. However, it is particularly irksome when three weeks prior the Mayor was visiting various communities telling them that we do not have to consult on the Annual Plan this year because we are not deviating significantly from the Long-Term Plan. He also outlined the program of works that the area would be getting in the current financial year.

It is unlikely that events developed so quickly in the three weeks between our Annual Plan presentations and the Full Council meeting where we received the list of projects being canned that it was a surprise to staff.

But that did not stop staff providing a list of works to be done (that were not going to be done) for presentation to the ratepayers in our district meetings. Therefore, the feedback that we went out to seek was irrelevant because it was not based on the facts. Money well spent.

Twelve months ago the Mayor was doing the same Annual Plan tour suggesting that there would be two consultations on the dam, at the time knowing full well that we would only have time for one consultation.

 Why do we present to our community when we cannot present the current reality?

This kind of behaviour must stop.

It is no wonder our ratepayers do not trust a word that we say. These are the kind of examples that provoke me to campaign for a more accountable Council.

Filed Under: Projects, Your Say Tagged With: cheap housing, inconsistencies, misinformation

McKee Memorial Reserve Reopens

18/10/2018

McKee campground opens

The McKee Memorial Reserve opens the gate to campers again this Friday October 19th.  It has taken a mammoth effort after the effects of ex-Tropical Cyclone Fehi in February this year to get it back to a habitable state. Storms of this magnitude have not ravished the Reserve since 1954-55 when similar events killed many of the shrubs and trees.

Council staff and contractors alongside of Friends of the Reserve have had to move tones of logs and rubble thrown up by the sea. They have created new drainage pathways and upgraded the sewerage reticulation. Trees killed by the salt-water inundation have been removed and the children’s playground has been put back together.

McKee Memorial Reserve with Fred McKee and Dean McNamara

It was an honour to be able to do a final walk around and inspection ahead of the opening with Fred McKee whose family donated much of the land that makes up the reserve the today. It is an area rich in history from the Maori that frequented the coastline in pre-European times, to the horse drawn cable car that was used by early European settlers to transport goods from the beach up the bluffs.

The McKee Reserve is the only area of significant coastal native bush left between the Able Tasman National Park and Nelson and is home to an array of native birds. The bird life has recovered significantly with the efforts put in by long serving caretaker Ken Todd trapping pests in the area.

Chatting with the McKee campground manager
Ken Todd, Fred McKee, Dean McNamara

While Ken has not been at the reserve quite as long as the giant Lancewood tree (150 – 200 years old) he and his partner Jan Wellington have been the resident caretakers for almost 22 years. Waking up to a beachfront view like they have it is easy to see why they have not been keen to relinquish their job. However, they have decided it is time to pack up and see more of the world, and we thank them for the many years of hard work and wish them well for the future.

This does mean that Tasman District Council are currently advertising for a new caretaker. If you are at all interested I would get a CV in quick because this is one job that won’t need to be advertised twice!

It is fantastic to see that the Council has made the effort to reopen the McKee Memorial Reserve as a camping ground in response to pleas from the community. The budget price camp ground ($6 a night) has been a favourite for many locals with many having generational ties to their favourite spot!

According to Ken the patronage is about 60/40 split between locals and guests from further afield. Even young foreign tourists return home and send their parents back to Ruby Bay to stay at McKee. Ken assures me that when the parents show up and ask him if he remembers their children who stayed some years earlier he always responds “yes of course, they looked a lot like you … only younger!” Not a bad memory given that Ken collects $130,000 worth of $6 fees a year!

If you are planning to stay at the McKee Memorial Reserve this summer it will pay to book in early as the camp site is still a work in progress and the storm damage has reduced the number of sites available. Down from the previous 250 people a night to 150 for the opening, staff will be monitoring the reserve to see what capacity can be comfortably accommodated in the future.

Download a copy of the Fred McKee brochure and learn more fascinating facts about the reserve

Filed Under: Projects Tagged With: Campground, McKee Memorial Reserve, Ruby Bay

13 Reasons Why-The Waimea Dam

15/10/2018

13 reasons why the Waimea Dam

Waimea Irrigators Ltd (WIL) have announced a new funding model for their share of the dam. The institutional investor that rode in on a white horse the day after the Council voted the Waimea Dam funding and governance model down has been side-lined.

[redacted] the institutional investor, whom we know not the identity of,wanted to de-risk his investment by shifting the risk of his shares onto theirrigators. The same irrigators who have shifted large portions of their riskonto the general rate-payer and urban water user. When the irrigators saw thatrisk was being shifted to them in similar fashion they started to squeal like a stuck pig and said it wasn’t fair.

Instead of this unfair arrangement they said they would like to fund the extra shares themselves, so [redacted] passed the hat around, and within a few days they had come up with an extra $11 million dollars from 13irrigators (and possibly one non-irrigating shareholder).

These are the same irrigators, who when we were talking about an $83 million-dollar dam said they were “at their limit” of payment and wanted Council (the urban water ratepayer) to buy more shares then the amount of shares we already had signed up for to more than satisfy our 100-year demand.

These are the same irrigators who were “at their limit” on the $83 million-dollar dam and could not possibly be tied to any dam overrun expenses, thus shifting 100% of dam overrun risk on to the general ratepayer and urban water user.

These are the same irrigators who were “at their limit” when the environmental flow components of the dam were being divvied out [these figures are a fabrication designed to shift cost from irrigators that should fall on the users for using the river as a conduit to run their water from the dam to their pumps like with all the plan B options]. The end result being that the general rate-payer had to pick up these costs (now a total of 52% of running costs) because “we all have to get there together or we don’t get there at all.”

These are the same irrigators who were “at their limit” on an $83 million-dollar project who managed to find “their share” of the increase in the dam budget when the project became a $102 million-dollar project – within a matter of days.

And now we see that within a matter of days 13 irrigators (plus possibly one other) are able to put their hand in their pocket to find another $11 million dollars. This would be in line with the comments by WIL chairman Murray King who said if the dam doesn’t go ahead they would spend more than four times their dam contribution to put in their own water supplies. 

Dam under hostage

The 13 reasons why this dam is being built have been revealed, and they will, once the dam is built, control the water on the Waimea Plains as they have a monopoly on water right allocations. They will set the price of any water shares sold and they will determine if the applicant is a worthy recipient of said shares.

[I am told this statement is factually incorrect. Council controls water right allocations through the TRMP, what the investment vehicle will partly control is the ability to affiliate and therefore get a more secure water supply.]

[redacted] This despite the fact that the general rate-payer and urban water user will be subsidising irrigators on the Waimea Plains for at least the next 100 years anyway.

On top of that we have still ended up with a scenario where the Council does not have a buffer zone between when irrigators are required to experience water restrictions and when the Council reticulation is required to experience water restrictions. I have heard all the explanations from staff how with the dam this won’t be an issue for 100 years. I have also heard how the Government could change what we currently consider to be an acceptable minimum flow in the river at the drop of a hat. I am also waiting to see that the dam works as described as we head into changing climate conditions. [redacted]

Filed Under: Projects, Your Say Tagged With: Funding, Waimea Community Dam, waimea irrigators

Dam Decisions

08/09/2018

Waimea dam decision

Congratulations to the Waimea Irrigators who have secured a subsidized water supply for the next 100 years (assuming the dam can be built, functions as intended, and lasts for 100 years). I hope the smaller shareholders in WIL are informed as to what risks they carry. Given that 2000 shares have been sold to investors only 3000 shares are target rateable in the event council comes knocking for a share of any overruns. I suspect that some of the 3000 shares are held by people with an exit strategy also, although councillors have no idea who the shareholders (or the investors) are.

Businesses on the reticulated supply will also be celebrating. However, I hope they read the fine print of this dam that they wanted so badly. I also thought a dam was a good solution, but not THIS dam. If the costs start to overrun then water on the reticulated supply is going to be eye wateringly expensive given that we are starting from a position of the most expensive urban supply in the country. One can imagine in this scenario that Nelson residents being supplied from Tasman will insist that Nelson City Council supplies them water, and in that scenario, there will be another million dollars a year (current prices) that will fall back on Tasman residents and businesses.

Waimea Dam good deal

Looking ahead (given that I have been accused of near sightedness among other things) we are destined for a similar problem that exists with the current over-allocation model. Urban supply should always have been protected as allocations were made on the plains. This did not happen and the council has repeated exactly the same mistake with the new dam supply model.

Given that the urban water user and businesses are paying for gold-plated shares in the dam (because it is not an irrigator subsidy) we should have a gold-plated supply guarantee. This would look something like a protected portion of the reservoir that can only be released to cover the urban supply. The deal that we have got is a deal where everyone is on the same restrictions.

During the summer the irrigators will be pumping full allocations and the tap on the dam will be opened to meet the demand. When the dam gets down to 20% capacity water restrictions will kick in across the board (irrigators, urban, and commercial). Everyone will end up on cease take at the same time just as occurs now. This will not affect the bulk of irrigators as they need the supply early in the summer before their fruit and crops are harvested. The most likely irrigators to be affected by late summer restrictions are market gardeners and dairy farmers extending their season.

However, the industrial users such as fruit processors, and the meat works will be hitting peak season as restrictions apply. Other industries also spoke about how they cannot afford any restrictions, such as the glue plant, cool stores, and the mall etc. Given the exceedingly high price our industries are paying for their “water security” I hope they are happy with the deal this dam offers for the next 100 years.

Since I am so nearsighted, my objection that there is no mention in the Terms Sheets of who pays for the decommissioning of the dam is obviously redundant also. But what do we care, we won’t be around in 100 years, right? Let’s hope this dam doesn’t need decommissioning before then.

In the short term I only have to worry about the degraded state of the river, a responsibility in our consents and under The National Policy Statement For Fresh Water (that doesn’t state we have to build dams contrary to what dam supporters keep telling me). The corners being cut in dam construction by flooding a huge quantity of mulched wood and stumps left in situ will be challenging to mitigate the effects of. It is highly likely that the running costs will blow out accordingly as we try and mitigate these effects – further adding to the burden on water users.

Of course, my concerns are only based on a few vocal nay-sayers and I should only be taking the advice of staff and their experts.

No doubt time will tell who are the heroes and who was the voice of reason. Whether dam advocates will be labelled as saviours of the district or whether the nay-sayers will be able to say “I told you so.”  But one thing is for sure, if this dam doesn’t deliver as promised, it won’t be the wealthy that will be left homeless.

pool celebration
Cheers

Filed Under: Projects, Your Say Tagged With: decisions, fine print, risks, Waimea Community Dam

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Councillor McNamara: As Reported In The News

  • Latest News
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