Bright Wings

Masterton Council: Tail wagging the dog

A Masterton lobby group is calling the Mayor and Masterton District Councillors to account as discontent grows with Council decision-making and attitudes. Calling themselves the Pooh Pond Group, their advertising says - 

"We need to elect a council which will take control of the decision-making process again, and do so by employing officers and consultants, should they be needed, who take their instructions from our elected representatives."  

Serious doubts about the wastewater scheme methodology, which was passed by a close vote, and just before the election,  is the primary reason for formation of this group. 

Keen to see the Council in action for myself, I attended the August Council meeting. The meeting had the cosy air of a committee meeting in someone's living room, albeit with careful observation of formal meeting procedure.

At no stage were Council managers called to account for their actions. When Council managers were asked a question the answer was always delivered in a "leave this to us, we know what we're doing" manner that brooked no discussion.

Having worked as a manager for a large urban council, where appearing before the council was a truly terrifying experience, it appeared to me that Masterton Council management had it very easy.

Most of the meeting was mindnumbingly boring, as it plodded stolidly through committee report after committee report.

I was struck by the lack of vision, the lack of direction, the lack of passion, the sense that following the meeting agenda was the Most Important Thing, and the sense that they'd been doing exactly the same thing for the last 30 years.

The incoming Masterton Council needs to take hold of the reins, to set the vision and take some bold and entrepreneurial decisions. They need to look closely at the courage of the South Wairarapa District Council, who made some hard decisions about their future direction and staffing in line with what the community wanted. 

The Pooh Pond Group is holding a meeting in the Frank Cody Lounge, at the Masterton Town Hall, on Thursday, 23 September, where voters have an opportunity to listen to candidates' views and to ask questions. The meeting will be chaired by Rick Long and starts at 7.30 pm.

Carterton Council gardens a winner

Carterton District Council gardening staff really know how to use colour effectively. The Council offices in Holloway Street are testimony to their skills.

While many provincial council gardens look as if their planting plans were determined by whatever was on special at the plant wholesalers, Carterton continues to lead the way with imaginative plantings.

Combining a mass of pink bedding pelagoniums and blue salvias with the hot colours of bedding dahlias takes imagination and knowledge of what works.

The window boxes transform a relatively plain building, as well as providing privacy for council staff and something nice to look at when they're seeking inspiration.

Super-city not for the Wairarapa

The DomPost reports on a super-city proposal for Wellington, which would include the Wairarapa .

Wellington is an urban centre, based on the Public Service and the knowledge economy. The large, well-educated population ensures that there is a large base of ratepayers to share the cost of services.  The average salary is twice that of the Wairarapa.

The Wairarapa is the provincial heartland, sparsely populated, and rural economy focused, although the Wellington weekend tourist market is important to the South Wairarapa.

 

Back-office services

There is a case for combining some back-office services, such as rating, resource management, human resources, infrastructure and even some help with parks and reserves management, across the Wellington region.  

Wellington has little or no experience in managing sparsely-populated, manually-focused, rural areas, with completely different priorities, although it has specialist staff in, for example, infrastructure, which might reduce the need for Wairarapa councils to use consultants.

 

Wairarapa Voice

The Wairarapa struggles to have a voice on the Greater Wellington Regional Council, with representation down to one Wairarapa council member.  There is a danger the Wairarapa's differing needs and concerns would be completely subsumed by a super-city council, whose focus is almost entirely urban.

Wairarapa amalgamation

There are, on the other hand, compelling reasons for combining Masterton, Carterton and the South Wairarapa Councils into one organisation. Some services - such district planning - are already combined.  The Wairarapa Library Service successfully provides services to Carterton, Greytown, Featherston and Martinborough.

Goverance and management of the current Wairarapa councils is uneven and patchy. Amalgamation might allow more rigorous performance measures for senior managers and better training and education for councillors. 

One of the biggest obstacles to successful governance might not be addressed by amalgamation: the tendency of many Wairarapa people to vote for people they know, rather than people that can get the job done, remains an enduring problem.

 

The vexed issue of the Hosking Garden

The future of the Hosking Garden is worrying Masterton residents alarmed that the garden - Masterton's swimming pool from the early 1900s until the 1960s - may be demolished.

The concept plan  assumed demolition of the sunken garden and replacing it with an imprint - see 1B above.

If you look along the Dixon Street side of the promenade walk on the plan, the Sunken Garden imprint is flush with the edge of the walk, whereas the actual sunken garden is sticking out into this promenade area.

I think the council were a bit quick in moving on landscaping the adjoining area in line with the new plan.  The Hosking Garden now sticks out like a sore thumb into the promenade.

The entrance to the park - almost opposite Aratoi - has been realigned in accordance with the Richard Fowler plan which has made no attempt to connect the new lawns and gardens with the Hosking Garden.  Instead, the Hosking Garden has been left isolated and awkward looking.

If the Council votes to retain the Hosking Garden instead of the imprint, some rework of adjoining lawns, beds and pathways will be needed to ensure the garden is connected to the rest of the park.

And I'd like to see it planted more imaginatively in something other than the usual hectic plantings of annuals.

Di and Ian Grant highlight a further concern, writing in the Times-Age:

We do not believe the Council has the right to remove the sunken garden until it can tell citizens exactly what it will be replaced with and why this is demonstrably better than what we have now."

The only item on the Council website about the Queen Elizabeth Park makeover was the concept plan already noted above.

The Council has missed a great publicity opportunity with detailed plan on their website, and a scale model on display in the Aratoi foyer for anyone who wanted to have a look

It will be interesting to see which side prevails when the Council votes on the future of the Hosking Garden on Wednesday.

Plastic recycling nightmare

Plastic waste is a worldwide problem. I was shocked by the mountain of plastic at the Masterton Transfer Station, at Nursery Road.

Looking more closely at this mountain I could see a variety of different plastics all jumbled together. Milk containers, softdrink bottles, yoghurt containers (which are apparently not recycled according to the Council website) - all thrown into a huge heap.

This led me to two conclusions:

1. Transfer station staff are not trained to differentiate between different plastic types and are lumping them all together, or
2. There is no market for any of the plastics so they are being bundled up and dumped somewhere.

Having seen this heap I wondered why I'd bothered spending time separating recyclable plastics into the different bins if they were just going to end up together.

Time to charge the manufacturers

I think it is high time drink manufacturers were charged a hefty levy to cover the cost of recycling softdrink bottles.

As a nation we should be examining

• why so much softdrink is being consumed and
• why we are not using returnable glass bottles

Apparently softdrink is the top-selling supermarket item. This is creating a huge environmental problem and is already causing significant health problems that are going to cost the country dearly in years to come.

Health professionals tell me they regularly have to try and wean people off three two-litre softdrink bottles per day.

Masterton cafe rent debacle raises interesting confidentiality issues

Organisations which do business with Masterton District Council may think twice about doing so in future after the media circus surrounding rental charges for the cafe in Queen Elizabeth Park.

There are several issues which seem to have been overlooked in this debate.

• The Council is acting effectively as a commercial landlord in this situation
• It is common for commercial landlords of retail premises to grant rent holidays or reduce rent for a temporary period where one of their shops is struggling.
• The Council had a commercial valuation done first to correctly determine an appropriate rental
• Reduced rental is better than no rental at all and potentially empty premises
• Given the economic climate earlier this year and the general downturn in business for cafes, no-one in their right mind would have taken over the lease of the premises had the business folded.
• Given the isolated location of the cafe in the middle of the park, vandalism would have been highly likely if the cafe had closed down. This would have cost the Council considerably more than the small loss of income from reducing the rent.

If an organisation enters into a financial agreement with a council it is reasonable that details of such arrangement remain confidential. 

I find it very curious that the Wairarapa Times-Age frontpage story - Why did park cafe get a big rate cut - has not been loaded on their website.

I am equally curious as to how the Times-Age obtained a copy of the in-committee minute which covered this decision as it does not appear to have been obtained under provisions of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 (LGOIMA)

It may be timely to note the terms of the Code of Conduct which Council members are obliged to sign when they take office:

In the course of their duties members will receive information that is confidential. This will generally be Council information that is either commercially sensitive or is personal to a particular individual or organisation. Members must not use or disclose confidential information for any purpose other than the purpose for which the information was supplied to the member. Any failure to observe these provisions may affect the Council's performance, by inhibiting information flows and undermining public confidence in the Council. Failure to observe these provisions may also expose the Council to prosecution under the Privacy Act 1993 or civil litigation, and may expose individual members to responsibility for loss under s.46 of the Local Government Act (2002).

Masterton printer takes environmental stand against Greater Wellington Council

Wairarapa News reports that Masterton printing company Printcraft has

turned its back on a lucrative contract with Greater Wellington regional council because of the authority's insistence on using paper [Sapphire Offset] the printer says is sourced from Indonesia.

Printcraft's General Manager, Lance Johnson, says

the paper specified by GWRC is produced by Singapore-based Asia Pulp & Paper (APP). The pulp and paper giant has been at the centre of many environmental controversies and has been accused of being involved in illegal logging in Cambodia and Indonesia.

Because Printcraft refuses to use paper from APP it no longer has a contract with Greater Wellington Regional Council.

Lance Johnson's email to the regional council says it all:

"We wish to make it very clear that our resignation as a preferred print supplier to GWRC is because of your continued unwillingness to properly examine the reasons why you should not continue to specify Sapphire Offset - a dereliction of duty that makes a mockery of the council's sustainability claims."

An internet search revealed that Printcraft was not alone in being concerned about APP's environmental practices. Examples include office supply giant Staples Inc. dropping APP as a supplier due to concerns over its environmental performance.

Ironically the printing jobs at issue were pamphlets to support the regional council's environmental initatives.

Top marks to Printcraft for taking an ethical stand ahead of profits.

Speed reductions may not reduce speed

I'm right behind Masterton District Council's moves to reduce speed on some rural roads.

Many of these roads are very narrow and were designed with the leisurely speeds of a 1950 Morris Minor in mind, on its weekly visit to town on a Friday.

While the majority of law-abiding motorists will comply with the new speed limits I don't think it's going to have the slightest impact on boy racers.  They know they're immortal so will continue to roar east down West Bush Road and come to grief - as so many already have - at the sharp righthand bend.

And if you've already got $20,000 of traffic fines, don't have a licence, or are already disqualified, another ticket is neither here nor there.

Dog and Lemon Guide Editor, Clive Matthew-Wilson, observes that middle class, law-abiding-citizen solutions don't work with boy racers.

I heard somewhere recently that the cars boy racers are driving today had the same power as earlier Formula One racing cars. These are cars which need maturity and experience to handle, but are in the hands of young people who may have only been driving for a very short time.

And can someone tell me why so many teenagers need to drive to school these days? 

Badly managed dogs continuing problem

News reports of horrific injuries to a Waikato woman who was set upon by eight pig dogs while jogging highlight a huge difficulty for local authorities.  Apparently none of the eight dogs involved in the attack was registered, although two older dogs on the property were registered.

All Councils have bylaws requiring dogs to be licensed and lay down various responsibilities for owners. Unfortunately there is a group of dog owners who consider themselves above the law. Their dogs are typically not registered and they are often there to provide "security" for the owners, meaning they are trained to be aggressive and/or are dogs which have a particularly aggressive disposition.  Most of these dogs are neither neutered nor spayed which means that the problem is perpetuated by endless litters of puppies.

The Masterton District Council is struggling with this issue according to a recent report in the  Times-Age.

Here's a couple of suggestions I'd put to the Council:

1. Ask neighbours to report seemingly dangerous dogs, or dogs they suspect may not be registered, to the Council. It would be a simple matter for Council staff to check their dog licensing database to see if dogs were registered at the property, and follow up with a visit if no registered dogs appeared on the database, or there were other concerns.   Ditto wandering dogs.
   
   Dog Control Officers can't be everywhere and won't necessarily be able to spot dogs hidden in the backyard.  A Dob in a Dog media campaign, repeated at regular intervals, might help spot some of these animals before they become serious problems.
   
   Use all possible remedies, within the law, to impound and destroy such animals and advertise these penalties widely.


2. Encourage dog owners to take their dogs to dog obedience classes by subsidising the cost of basic obedience training and/or providing an easily-accessed local venue to the obedience trainers, and reducing the registration cost for dogs which have a certificate from an approved obedience course. This might well help with dogs "rushing" people and attacking other dogs and make life much easier for the owner as well.

Masterton wastewater upgrade cost highlights funding difficulty

Masterton Mayor Garry Daniell has been lobbying Government for a sewerage subsidy to reduce the $21 million cost of the much-debated Homebush wastewater upgrade.

He highlights a real problem for local government in provincial New Zealand: the small number of ratepayers means a higher individual cost per ratepayer for any infrastructure initiative.

Household incomes are much smaller in Masterton than in a major urban centre and the population of Masterton is aging significantly. Those on superannuation do not have much spare discretionary income to spend on additional rates but the sewerage system needs fixing. Urgently.

Infrastructure spending is always a fraught area for local government. Much of it is unappealing and irrelevant to individual ratepayers - except for getting the Council to fix the stormwater problem in their street.  Councils large and small struggle with a trade-off between industry best practice, a vociferous few, and ratepayer indifference to consultation initiatives - until it hits them in the pocket.

Central and Regional Government has set higher and higher standards for territorial authorities to meet. Some councils have had real difficulty funding the cost of upgrades to meet the required standards for drinking (potable) water.

I hope Garry Daniell is successful in his submissions to Government over the Homebush upgrade. Failing that, perhaps every household in Masterton could install a composting loo - !

Happy birthday Wairarapa Libraries

It's eight years since the merger of the Carterton, Greytown, Featherston and Martinborough libraries into the Wairarapa Library Service. 

A real success story for Wairarapa local government, it pooled lending and back-office library resources spread over four rural towns. 

The Times-Age reports on eighth birthday celebrations.

Foolish behaviour by Masterton Councillors

The Wairarapa Times-Age has a disturbing report about a formal complaint laid against Masterton District Councillor Brent Goodwin.

Aratoi director Marcus Boroughs has laid a formal complaint, accusing Mr Goodwin and other councillors Roddy McKenzie and Chris Peterson of intimidating the temporary female worker at a meeting at Café Strada.

Mr Boroughs said the girl had arranged to meet Mr McKenzie to talk about a temporary job on his Mauriceville farm and first assumed the other two men were farm workers.

Mr Goodwin has admitted he offered the worker free movie tickets in exchange for "accurate" visitor counts at Aratoi, and has also claimed full responsibility for the approach, stressing the other two councillors are innocent.

Irrespective of whether the formal complaint has any basis, it is never a good idea for councillors to meet junior staff members of an organisation which has a contract with the Council behind the back of that organisation's management.  Whatever the reason.

Councillors need to remind themselves of one of the key planks of their own Code of Conduct which states:

Honesty and Integrity - Members should not place themselves in situations where
their honesty and integrity may be questioned, should not behave improperly and
should on all occasions avoid the appearance of such behaviour.

According to the Code of Conduct, complaints are to be heard by the Conduct Review Committee. The results of their findings will be awaited with interest.

Local government needs to improve governance information

The controversy over the Masterton Urban Wastewater Treatment upgrade has highlighted the need for Wairarapa Councils to provide more online information about governance and supporting reasons for decision-making. I noted Jeff Workman's desire to improve Council communication in an earlier post. 

While some Wairarapa councils have council and committee minutes available on their websites, these are simply a record of decisions, and do not provide any background of the discussion that led to a decision, nor the reports submitted by council officers to support the discussion.

I would like to be able to read online the same council officers' reports that councillors read so I can be informed as to the reasons a particular course of action is proposed.

What I'd like to see happen is:

• Agendas for all council meetings and committees posted on councils' websites at least a week ahead of a meeting
• All council officers' reports tabled at those meetings to be uploaded to the website at the same time
• All council and committee minutes uploaded when they are prepared. (These would need to include a note that they have yet to be approved.)  Carterton and South Wairarapa already post their agendas and minutes, but I was unable to find any on the Masterton website. 
• All information about a council committee - membership, agendas, minutes and reports - grouped together on the website.

This would give interested ratepayers - and the media - an opportunity read background information and to highlight more effectively issues that may well be of interest to the wider public. It would also allow searching on a particular topic.

At the moment council agendas and supporting papers are available at public libraries and, daunted by the amount of paper, I suspect few people read them.

There will always be a few "in committee" issues - where councillors need to have a full and frank discussion about an issue of particular sensitivity, or where there is commercially sensitive information - such as contract details between a supplier and a council.  These are the exception - the majority of council governance activities should be open and transparent.

The principle underpinning the Local Government Information Act 1987 is that all local government information is "discoverable" (ie, open to the public) unless there are compelling reasons, which are outlined in the Act, for their remaining secret.

Ratepayer apathy challenged

The Wairarapa Times-Age reports Councillor Jeff Workman is on a mission to improve communication between the Masterton District Council and ratepayers.

This is a real challenge.  As a former staff member for a metropolitan local authority I understand his frustration.  Local authorities spend a small fortune telling their ratepayers what they're planning to do (consultation) and seeking feedback.  And getting almost none.

Much of the essential work of a local authority is around infrastructure; boring, uninteresting things like replacing sewers, sealing roads. Even putting in a new sewage treatment facility.  

Residents may grizzle when their rates rise to cover the cost of some essential infrastructure service, but few put pen to paper, or attend public meetings.  

The Long Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP) is an expensive and time-consuming exercise local authorities must undertake to ensure that they are thinking and planning ahead in a way that will meet present and future needs of their community.  It is my experience that it is terribly difficult to interest the public, despite a council's best efforts.

People will react much more strongly to something where there is an emotional attachment.  The saga of the Greytown Town Hall, where locals fought tooth and nail to retain the building as a town hall - even though it was so run down that it was only used a couple of times a year, is a case in point.

The Masterton District Council website is worthy, but boring. A branding exercise for Masterton District Council, with new logo and style guide - and a makeover for the website - would help.  Carterton District Council is leading the way here with a smart logo and impressive, modern website.