Blindsided?
The Otago Daily Times (1.11.12) states:
“Dunedin city councillors are pointing fingers after some were blindsided by a $3.2 million loss by the company running Forsyth Barr Stadium. Some councillors spoken to by the Otago Daily Times yesterday admitted they were unaware they had accepted reports detailing the loss at Monday’s council meeting. Other councillors were aware of the reports, but were still yet to read them properly.” ODT Link
Blissfully unaware, or deliberately avoiding and shielding knowledge of the fact, thereby keeping the public and media at arm’s length from the true state of council finances relating to the stadium project?
That is a question for all elected representatives at Dunedin City Council, the council’s chief executive, the executive management team (EMT), and the governance manager.
Sadly, the annual reports don’t tell the full story of the ‘stadium effect’ – that is, the figures that Dunedin renters and ratepayers will be facing, and unable to pay, when the whole system is called to ‘correct’.
Fire away, Dunedin public.
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It’s as if the newspaper editor has suffered a blunt contusion. Sees the problem then runs away to John Wilson Ocean Drive (closed from August 2006), and ends weakly, out of steam, with the hope that those in power “will turn their full attention to making our new stadium a profitable investment of which the city can be proud”, and would they please read the annual report[s].
### ODT Online Sat, 3 Nov 2012
Editorial: Council must keep eye on the ball
Just as it seemed the Dunedin City Council was determined to focus on a different attitude towards debt, revelations that a worse-than-expected $3.2 million loss by the company running the Forsyth Barr Stadium was not even discussed at this week’s full council meeting have put it back in the firing line and raised questions about its priorities. The loss – nearly $1 million greater than forecast – was recorded in Dunedin Venues Management Ltd’s (DVML) 2011-12 annual report, which was released a day later to this newspaper. But it had flown under the radar at the council meeting, with no mention of the reports on DVML or Dunedin Venues Ltd (DVL), which owns the stadium, on the meeting’s public agenda, and no indication those reports had been circulated publicly and to media – as required under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act – ahead of the meeting. The reasons for that are unclear and convoluted.
Read more
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From our Northland cuzzies, some clues for rabbit hunting…
Image: NZ Herald
### New Zealand Herald 5:30 AM Saturday Nov 3, 2012
Inside Kaipara’s ratepayers revolt
By Andrew Laxon
Many residents of a small coastal town are refusing to pay for a $58 million debt that has crippled their local council and left them with the bill.
The Mangawhai Ratepayers and Residents Association chairman Bruce Rogan has at least 500 local residents refusing to pay an estimated $1 million in rates this year because the Kaipara District Council secretly ran up an unsustainable $58 million debt building a sewerage treatment scheme for about 2000 people who own homes here.
Read more
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Dare we say, Dunedin, the amount currently owed by each city ratepayer well exceeds that owed by the good ratepayers of Mangawhai, on the Kaipara.
So, what now?
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
