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DEAN MCNAMARA – YOUR VOICE IN COUNCIL

This website contains the personal opinions of Dean McNamara Councillor – No official Tasman District Council endorsement given or implied.

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One Rule For Them One Rule For Us

An interesting Engineering Committee meeting this week (21.06.18) highlighted the one rule for them one rule for us inconsistencies I see at Council.

Recently, I tried to establish that new homes would have to put in a rainwater storage tank. I wasn’t too concerned whether that was part of their water supply network, or just a stormwater retention system. If it is to be used as water supply then it has to be treated and pressurised and costs climb rapidly. It could just be used for non-consumption applications and that way wouldn’t need treating but would still require plumbing. Or the water could just be used for garden application and washing the car. Alternatively, it could just be used in a slow release application that would help take the burden off stormwater networks during storm events and create a more environmentally friendly system by spreading the release of stormwater into the environment.

The argument I faced at the time of trying to implement this motion was that “it would be unaffordable for first home buyers.”  I am sorry, but I think if the extra couple of thousand on a new build is going to make it impossible for a first home buyer to build then they may need to lower their sights.

On a one rule for Richmond and another rule for rural areas comparison, the proposed new Public Water Supply Bylaw stipulates [Part C 20 (4)] that rural restricted supply customers must have 7 days water storage on site (they also have to have two tanks dedicated to firefighting supply).  While I understand the logic of the 7-day supply (I would dispute the firefighting supply) I can not help but wonder how that is affordable for first home buyers looking to build in the rural area?  Let us use consistent logic with rural home builders as we do with Richmond home builders (or visa versa).

Another interesting point to note in the proposed bylaw that will be going out to consultation very soon is the requirements that are placed on homeowners in regard to their water supply lines [Part c 29 (3)]. Customers “must not allow water to run to waste including the unattended operation of hoses, allow the condition of plumbing within the premises to deteriorate to the point where leakage or waste occurs, or allow leaks to continue unchecked or repaired.”reading this sign is strictly prohibited

One rule for Tasman District Council and one rule for our customers?

I argued that surely, we should not impose on our ratepayers a rule that stipulates they cannot allow their water lines to deteriorate to a point where a leak may occur when we ourselves operate to a level of acceptable leakage?

The response was that it is not a rule that we would pursue unless there was obviously water spraying out of the ground and nothing was being done about it. However, that is not what the rule states. It states that you are not allowed to let your plumbing deteriorate to the point where a leak occurs. There is another point about not fixing leaks. So again, I say this is a case of one rule for them one rule for us!  And incidentally, I would be objecting during submissions if you do not like it.

It would also appear that at TDC we have different levels of compliance acceptability. Page 69 paragraph 7.15 of the agenda highlights a problem that we had with Fibre network installer. The permit for the installation of fibre in Ruby Bay stipulates that there must be at least 500mm separation from Council services. The contractor has not complied with those conditions and has, in fact, laid the Fibre cable alongside the wastewater pipes (like touching alongside). In fact, we discovered this because they damaged the pipe in at least a couple of places. We are currently fighting to have the costs associated with fixing the pipe compensated.

My question is how come the contractor laying the pipe is not treated like anyone else with a consent. If you have a consent to build your house and you put the foundations 500mm closer to the boundary than your consent allows we will make you move your house. However, one rule for you and one rule for these contractors apparently, as we are unable to make them comply with their permit or so I am told. Why is it even an issue? Because if we damage their fibre cable while maintaining our services it costs tens of thousands of dollars to repair. Add to that the extra costs that any contractor will build into their quote if they know they are working close to a fibre cable and this will end up costing Council (the ratepayer) thousands of dollars over the years to come.

An example that may not fit the one rule for you another rule for us category, but it does highlight the inconsistencies that I fight around the table, is the e-waste (electronic items) subsidy that is proposed for Tasman residents (page 29 of the agenda).  one way dead endWhile I think that we need to do a lot more in terms of resource recovery from waste I was surprised that Councillors support this initiative as when I tried to get us to allocate money toward the Nelson Hospice they told me that this was a Government responsibility so we should not be contributing. Surely, the initiative to get manufacturers of high contaminant landfill waste to recover their own materials is a Government responsibility? A little consistency would make logical arguments a lot easier to present in the chambers!

Who Governs TDC

Who is Governing TDC?

 The question of who is Governing the Tasman District Council is on the face of it an odd one some might say. It is obvious that we, as a district, elect councillors and a Mayor to run the show in a democratic fashion.

This notion that councillors are in governance is often reinforced by staff. At least, it is whenever councillors try and micromanage projects in the community or in the Council. We are told we are governance who set the framework and approve the budgets, but it is staff who figure the best way of doing projects and how they get them done within the budget.TDC Governance

The confusion exists when we try and actually govern.

Unless governing is rubber stamping staff reports, I find that I am woefully under-briefed on large projects to be able to make governance decisions. Other decisions that I would have thought were governance decisions are made behind closed doors at meetings that I know nothing about. Some come through as a single line in an activity report (often large report) with no detail and no input from at least one councillor (unless I was asleep when it was discussed).

The agenda for the Council Meeting of 24th of May 2018 has a number of these kind of examples.

As a Councillor and also a member of the NRSBU (Nelson Regional Sewage Business Unit) I am intrigued to read in the exiting CEO’s report (p. 209 section 5) that our CEO and Nelson City CEO have agreed that it is time to combine the NRSBU and the Regional Landfill Business Unit into one body.

No doubt this proposal will come before council for rubber stamping at a future date. I do wonder if all the members of the NRSBU will be given an opportunity for input first (I am one of only two from TDC so you would think it wouldn’t be too hard make contact with them all).

Perhaps I am on outside on these dealings because I wasn’t the preferred candidate that the Mayor proposed to replace ex Councillor Higgins. Perhaps it is just another case of “Yes Minister” and I am just not on a need to know basis.

However, before we get too hard on staff and assume that they are running the show, let us look at another item on the agenda. In the Mayor’s report (p.232 item 2.6) we read that John Palmer, in his role as Chair of the Waimea Water Augmentation Project Board, has requested that the outgoing CEO Lindsay McKenzie be made available to continue to work on the project’s land and access work stream.

The mayor, of course, has fully endorsed this proposal. Obviously, the new CEO has approved the move also. I can imagine it would take a brave person to assert their authority before they have even taken over the role. It is certainly refreshing to see that John Palmer’s influence on the council is not diminishing. After all, I am sure that he is far more qualified to take on governance roles than those duly elected monkeys he seems to consistently be bypassing in getting his dam project completed.

Speaking of the dam, I am delighted also to read that if the result of the early contractor engagement process comes back with a tender price that exceeds budget (p.162 item 8) the Project Governance Board “will need time to consider the consequences before bringing a recommendation to the Council, WIL and CIL.” 

“Governance” should fully outline the consequences and put the appropriate spin on the facts before presenting them to be rubber stamped because “the decision to accept a tender price including the risk allocation arrangements has not been (and should not be) delegated.” And as we all know the monkeys need “the final price package [developed] as fully as possible before presenting it and to ensure that it is digestible.”

I am not sure that it is the Councillors that need things fully explained, it appears that the continuing debacle of WIL interpreting matters differently to Council has no end in sight. Items 6.1 on page 159 and 7.3 on page 161 of the agenda inform us that there a number of yet-to-be-sorted issues, such as the allocation of sunk costs and the apportionment of cost overruns. Sunk costs have already been spent without clear direction over who pays for what.  Fortunately, the overrun dispute will only be an issue if the dam comes in at higher than budget price. What are the chances of that considering we haven’t even got the land procurement sorted and the timeline is constantly being pushed out months at a time?

Yet we continue to throw literally millions of dollars at a project that DOC have said there is no path forward for. Our “partners” have different views over what we have agreed or not agreed. We have been instructed to ignore the voice of the majority of people who submitted on the dam when consulted because they do not represent the true voice of the community – but we cannot have a referendum to hear from the whole community because … the Mayor said.

I appreciate that governance is not always a popularity vote and that most of the decisions we make are unpopular with at least some people. However, when we are told that we cannot listen to the 70-80% of submitters on the dam because their small number is not reflective of the majority of the Tasman population, surely it would be good governance to get the opinion of the majority of people before committing all the rate-payers discretionary spending budget to one project for the foreseeable future?

It is comforting to see that the Mayor wants to fund councillor Hawkes’ travel expenses to join him at the Kiyosato 120th celebration in Japan (p.232 item 2.5). I am sure the vacation away will provide a great bonding opportunity to develop a relationship that will see past the swinging nature of Councillor Hawkes’ support for the dam. Not that I have any particular beef with the travel proposal, nor am I overly concerned that the same Mayor cannot even spell my name correctly (p. 231 item 1.42). It does, however, highlight ones’ importance in their role on council.

The Mayor has called me into his office for a chat about how I am going as a new councillor, and how effective I am performing, on precisely two occasions. One, just after my election, to access what areas of interest I had in relation to the various committees, and one to tell me off for getting my communications wrong as published here.

I certainly wasn’t included in the “some of you” that he discussed his remit for the LGNZ conference with (page 232 item 2.3).  Ever optimistically, I am sure that my overseas trip will be discussed in the second half of my tenure! He may even have my name down pat by then?

As a side note, I recently tried to get some money put into the Long Term Plan to address the request that the Nelson Hospice group made for funding assistance during submissions. The request was referred to a staff report which came back with a plethora of reasons of why we could not possibly gift the $70 000 a year for the next two years to such a worthy cause. It would have to go out to special consultations and all sorts. I see Nelson City Council managed to include $150,000 in their budget as a result of the same request made to them. I wonder if they will all be doing jail time for such an extravagant breach of protocol?

If you will excuse me I must return to my governance role of reading a deluge of pages about whether to allow an Councillor free luncheasement for a pedestrian bridge to be constructed over a stormwater reserve, which will no doubt be accompanied by a full verbal report on the day. It is highly important decisions like these that keep me enthusiastic about my governance role.

As for who is running the show?

Will someone wake me for the free lunch?  There is lunch provided today isn’t there?  I hope it is sausage rolls.

 

 

Buying Waimea Water Insecurity

Firstly, I apologise for being a little slow on the uptake to understand and convey this, but I had to wade through talk about Hectare equivalents, 100-year security of supply, environmental flows etc. However, I now believe that I understand how the dam allocations work (or don’t work).

Who Owns The Water Behind The Waimea Dam?

From all the pretty graphics and charts, you may be under the impression, as I was, that the dam reservoir holds water capacity in three allocations; as apportioned to irrigators, environmental flow, and urban supply. And you might assume that each party owns its share of the water occupying the allocated storage capacity.

You might have been right with that assumption had there been three pipes exiting the dam. If the irrigators had a pipe that we could meter then we could shut them off when they consumed their allocation, and when the fish drank their water from the environmental flow pipe we could shut them off, and council could manage the share allocated to urban water supply via another pipe. In this scenario, the allocation percentage might make sense.

But. . . that is not the scenario that we have on the table. In the current scenario, all of the water stored behind the dam belongs to one party. Believe it or not, the fish own all the water.
Let me explain.Fish and Waimea Dam

Because we only have one tap on the dam, and it feeds directly into the river, the only measure of control that we have is the river flow level. When the river level drops to a point that the fish dictate is unhealthy (or slightly before) we start to release water in the dam. We continue to release water from the dam in quantities that maintain happy fish until such point as there is no water left in the dam (other than a minimum level that we are required to retain), or until such time as the natural flows increase to a point where we can stop releasing from the dam.

At the point where the dam runs dry, if the drought has not broken, the fish will be unhappily flapping their fins on a hot dry river bed, the irrigators will have prunes not apples (I know apples don’t turn to prunes but you get the equivalent idea) and desperate urban supply water users will be standing on street corners in the dark of night buying bootleg water from smugglers bringing water across electorate lines. Armageddon reigns as described in the no dam scenario headlines. Fortunately, these events only occur in a greater than 1 in 60 year drought event. Although global warming proponents may find this a slightly more alarming statistic.

What all that means is that in this broken model for a dam, it doesn’t matter how many hectare equivalents council urban water club signs up for (whether one or one hundred thousand) the result is the same. Just as it doesn’t matter how many hectares the irrigators sign up for, which is probably why they over sold the need initially and then drastically reduced their intended subscription when it came to apportioning costs. In other words, the more dam debt council assumes does not translate to greater security of supply to urban water users.

Remember the fish own the water and dictate when supply is turned on, how much flow is required, and for how long the flow runs until the dam is drained (if required). The irrigators who are next in line, because their pumps are positioned above the urban water take at the mouth of the river, will use their over-allocated consents to legally pump until their hearts are content (or their permit allows). They will continue to pump while water flows down the river from the dam at a level that keeps the fish happy further exacerbating the need to release more water to keep the fish happy, until the dam runs dry. There is no mechanism to stop them pumping once their “share” of the dam reservoir is empty – and why should they, because they have a dam to pay for, and the fish will drink all the water anyway if they don’t use their share.

To top it all off, while the fish are happy drinking and the irrigators are happy pumping, the urban water users will also continue washing their cars and watering their lawns until the day that the dam runs dry.  There is no incentive for urban users to cut back on water use because the dam they paid for will be releasing water to feed the irrigators (who won’t cut back) and the thirsty fish who likewise need to maintain their share flowing into the sea (we don’t want the rising sea levels to run dry after all).

So you see, it doesn’t matter who pays for what share of the dam, the fish own the water and while they are happy everyone else can use as much as they please (or are daily consented to take). That is why this model is broken. There is no incentive for anyone to conserve water at any point before the dam runs dry.

If, on the other hand, we were to look at a “plan B” option, such as the water reservoirs built on the side of the river for urban supply, then we have a different model. Water use would continue as normal until the fish said cut back. At that point, the irrigators would have to start cutting back to maintain river flows and happy fish, and urban water users would have to either start cutting back and/or start supplementing their supply from the reservoir. In this scenario, there would be an incentive for urban supply users to start reducing their demand because they only have a finite supply in store once the river drops to minimum flow.

The bonus with this model is that there is a finite supply available for urban water users that the fish cannot drink and the irrigators cannot get their pumps into. What urban suppliers pay for urban suppliers get exclusive use of. This is a security of supply model as the reservoirs can be as big as money will allow and need drives.

I am not advocating the “Plan B” as a more cost-effective model, or to have the same benefit to the fish (as clearly there is none), but it does have some merit when it comes to ensuring a security of supply. It also has the advantage of being more likely to be constructed to the P95 (95% certain it can be built on budget) than the dam scenario – but that is fodder for another post.

This post is just to help you understand what your money spent on a dam will get you, and how happy you will make the fish.

Memoirs of a rubber-stamping monkey with the memory of a goldfish

The mistake I made when I was sworn in as Tasman District Councillor is that I took my position too seriously. It turns out that I am paid peanuts because I am expected to be a rubber-stamping monkey with the memory of a goldfish.

I came to this conclusion after numerous discussions around the council table and in private with people whose pay grade far out-ranks my own.  I have been told that I am just uninformed as a new councillor, and that is why I should vote the way of the good-old-boys. I am told I am acting irresponsibly for not rubber-stamping the proposals put before me.

Rubber Stamping Council Style
Signed … Monkey.

It gets worse. I have been told on the issue of the damn dam that even if the current dam proposal isn’t the best option at our disposal, although it obviously is, but even if it isn’t that we have no alternative other than to build it because we simply don’t have time to implement another option. On top of that I am told that I may have to ignore the voice of the majority of rate-payers if that is what it takes to get the job done. In other words, “Just rubber-stamp here.”

When I pointed out the problem I had with the inconsistencies I was being presented with to one highly paid individual I was told I just “need to get over it.”

So, you see, I am now at the point where I can see the error of my ways. I was thinking my role as an elected member of council was somehow important. Inflated impression of self-worth aside, I just over estimated the role of a councillor. Had I read the job description instead of just the lunch menu I am sure I would have read applicant must be a rubber-stamping monkey who cannot remember what was said in the last paper stamped because it will probably contradict what is in the paper you are currently being asked to stamp your approval on.

Now that both my pay grade, and my level of responsibility, have been established I am sure that I am going to be a far more effective in my newly informed role. I certainly won’t be taking myself, or my votes, too seriously moving forward.

Signed …. Monkey

Wait what did I sign?

Council Debt

An upward trend.

The good, the bad, the ugly.

The gift that keeps on giving.

These, and others were in the running for a subtitle on this post. But I decided to just run with “Council Debt.” I will let you choose the subtitle.

There a couple of different views prevalent around the council table when it comes to debt.Debt quote from Jefferson One view suggests that debt is good, that we are running a debt level that is low (even too low). The other view is that debt is a burden that exposes us unnecessarily to interest rate hikes and the interest on debt consumes a lot of rates that could otherwise build libraries and fix storm water issues.

The view that our LVR (Loan to Value Ratio) is low is in this councilors opinion flawed. It based on a business model. I agree that if you are in business and your LVR is $130 million of loan to $1.5 billion of assets then you are in good shape if not over-capitalized.

The problem is that council is not (primarily) “in business.”  Some of that debt is associated with business ventures such as ports, camping grounds, and shed 4 (for better or worse), and this debt is now “ring-fenced” to the commercial activities that generated it (thanks to the foresight of the likes of Councillor Greening). However, there is a lot of debt that is generated by the many assets that council owns which are not income generating. In this category, we have the likes of roads, parks, water and wastewater, and a swimming pool (don’t get me started).

The funding for all of these non-income generating assets and the servicing of the associated debt falls back on the rate payer. Another mortgage on your property if you will. Like with any mortgage, when interest rates go up you have to pay more.  Unlike the business model where interest is tax deductible and increased costs just mean a lower shareholder return, this is private debt that you will have to find extra money to pay (in the form of rate increases).  The only way to maintain rating levels with rising interest rates is to cut services.

Some current councilors believe that our current debt of around $4000 per rate payer is too low. However, only 10 years ago that level was around $1700 per rate payer, and only 15 years ago was around $650 per rate payer. Because interest rates have been lower than expected, and we have been fortunate enough to not experience any major natural disasters the past couple of years, this council was in the position to hold the rate level at a below inflation increase.

While that seems like good news, it is not as good as it would have been had our debt been at the 15 year ago level. Nor was this current lolly scramble a unanimous choice as we look ahead to interest rates already starting to trend upward. We have been in unprecedented conditions to make a serious attempt at getting our debt down and have not capitalized on that opportunity as we could have, and by that, I mean actual debt reduction, not the often bandied about “lower than forecast” debt (which is not hard to achieve when you understand that forecast debt includes the unrealistic wish list). A choice that we will likely pay for in the future.

If you are at all concerned about the percentage of your rates going toward debt servicing it would pay to quiz candidates in future elections about what they mean by “concerned about debt” and “rate affordability” because it has vastly different meanings to those around the current council table.

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Why Vote McNamara?

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