The following report was tabled at a meeting of the Dunedin City Council on Monday 22 September 2014:
█ Report – Council – 22/09/2014 (PDF, 3.8 MB)
Tourism Dunedin Annual Report
Oh dear, oh dear. Ex Tourism Dunedin chief Hamish Saxton says…. “The Tourism Dunedin report showed Dunedin’s total visitor nights increased 7.4%, to 826,431, in the year to May 2014, with domestic visitors up 6.3% and international visitors up 9.2%.”
Add this next report to bolster confidence and supply for old boy in-groups and the ever pea-brain assortment of city councillors – and the megalomaniac council staff who NEVER waste an opportunity to empire build or focus pressure in pursuit of higher salaried positions:
█ Report – Council – 22/09/2014 (PDF, 271.8 KB)
Growth Assumptions in the Long Term Plan
The message is, since We know grand theft auto already…. “We want CAKE! Want it now!” so, “Let’s be having it, Ratepayers, empty your sorry pockets for Our Edification, Delight and Comfortable Pay Cheques, for We at DCC don’t stand a F***’s chance of ever knowing how to create real jobs in the productive export sector. Give us FIVE STAR, now!!”
Nor was it their business.
### ODT Online Wed, 24 Sep 2014
City needs to offer visitors five-star hotel – report
By Chris Morris
Tourism Dunedin has left a call for more money, a five-star hotel and closer links with Queenstown ringing in the Dunedin City Council’s ears. The comments came from former Tourism Dunedin trustee Rainsford Grubb as he presented the now-defunct entity’s final annual report to the council this week. The report came months after Tourism Dunedin was subsumed by Enterprise Dunedin, an in-house council entity responsible for a broader mix of tourism, events and other activities, on June 30.
Read more
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Who is right?
Comment at ODT Online:
Targeted taxes
Submitted by Stevesone57 on Wed, 24/09/2014 – 11:25am.
….The fact is that motels and hotels in Dunedin have been hovering around 60% occupancy for three years now. Anyone in the industry will tell you this is nothing more than break even. It is clear that this announcement by Mr Grubb is the precursor for targeted [taxes] to promote Dunedin’s wonders. Targeted taxes on businesses already struggling to survive – these include hotels, motels, bars, cafes etc….
Read more
█ Recordings of council meetings are on the DCC YouTube channel.
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
What if? Dunedin... 
How about targeted rates for all those businesses that benefit from the multiplier effect, to help pay for luxuries like the stadium? They can’t have it both ways. No more rates money from those less well off is possible.
That’s the trouble Peter. We have councillors that want and get it both ways.
There is a name for that, but I can’t recall it at the moment.
I’ve just read the whole report of the outgoing Tourism Dunedin. My eyes glazed over at the inanity of it all. Pages and pages of trivia which makes me wonder how the mayor and councillors continue to put up with this nonsense. The reason I stoically persevered was to find out how many conferences in 2014 were held in the refurbished Town Hall Conference Centre. Try as I might I could not find mention of any factual events recorded. Plenty of stuff about activity in tendering for around 10 ‘active assists’ (whatever that means) but absolutely no mention of happenings.
Why am I interested in this? Well, back at the time the $50m (approx) refurbishment got the go-ahead it was based on a report by Horwath and Co. commissioned by then GM Strategy and Development Kate Styles, wherein it noted that in 2010 (the last year before closing for the upgrading project) there were 16 conferences of varying sizes held. It was projected that by 2015 there would be 36 conferences. On this basis the financial revenue over expenses estimates indicated a barely break even position, and when debt servicing was taken into account the complex would show an annual deficit of $4.2 million. And that is if the 36 target is achieved. But Kate Styles said “the report ticked all the boxes”. So watch out for a really big jump in conference activity next year. If not, Dave Cull might have some difficulty with his debt reduction objectives. Far be it for me to cavil at this, but it is looking again like a disaster.
To prevent further disaster, perhaps anyone with a bit of time to spare might like to come and watch our elected reps at work and at the same time let them know they are being watched (which is how representative democracy is supposed to work anyway). Here’s the link to the 2016 DCC meetings round. Check before going though because they do change things at the last minute sometimes. There are public forums before all meetings (of both council and its committees) except Extraordinary Meetings. If you want to speak, maybe contact Pam Jordan or Governance the day before.
Click to access Meeting-Schedule-2016.pdf
“Growth Assumptions in the LTP” report. Once again we see a “wet finger in the air” summary of what the “Planners” would like to see happen.
A year ago I did some research on the city’s growth trends and came up with the fact that the indigenous population (excluding visiting students) was slowly shrinking. In fact it is a long-time trend going back over 112 years. (You can believe it when you look around and see all the businesses which have downsized or disappeared.) This was gleaned from censuses taken over the years and comparing with national growth. In 1901 the city population (including the districts now incorporated in the city) stood at 70,000. This represented 8.5% of the national total. In 1921 it was 81,848 and 6.3%. In 1936 it was 91,200; and in 2006 118,683 or just 2.64%.
Put another way, in 105 years Dunedin grew by 69% whilst the country grew by 450%! In 1961 the Otago University FTS (full-time students) numbered 3,000. In 2007 they numbered 18,000. We could extrapolate this as meaning the difference being largely made up by outsiders, or transient citizens. If this difference of 15,000 was subtracted from the census total, that would give a true population figure of around 103,683. Barely a 12,000 increase from 1936, seventy years !! Think about it. Does this not tell us something? Do these Planners reflect on the past, or just beat up a story on what they would like it to be? Don’t the elected councillors do any independent inquiry, or do they just take as read and apply the old ‘rubber stamp’? If so, that is crass negligence. No wonder the city has wandered so far astray in its development strategies and consequent budget blow outs.
With Queenstown Lakes set to wrangle the financial benefits of international medical tourism, over Dunedin, I would say the village at coast is even more of a stuffed duck, buried by Cull.
Good riddance TD. Now we have the multi-pronged monster Enterprise Dunedin, headed by JC Superstar (COC Christie), to SLAY.
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### dunedintv.co.nz September 24, 2014 – 6:01pm
Tourism Dunedin has been presents last report
The last annual report from Tourism Dunedin has been presented to the Dunedin City Council. Tourism Dunedin was wound up in June, and replaced by Enterprise Dunedin – an all encompassing tourism and marketing body within the council. And while the report shows tourism has been strong over the last year, it also contains a warning.
Video
### dunedintv.co.nz September 25, 2014 – 6:58pm
Council considering change to population estimate method
There are conflicting estimates about the growth of Dunedin’s population over the next few decades. The Dunedin City Council has been using two different models, each with a different prediction about how many residents it will have to support. But that could be about to change.
Video
OBs this, OBs that. Then it’s The Tartan Mafia. A friend, the redunded philologist, comments: Good Even. Mafia is Sicilian patois, the conjoining of ‘Ma’, or Mother, with ‘Fia’, meaning daughter. Ma Fia. A mother/daughter operation. We conclude that the Tartan Mafia are distaff, Scots Italian plaid wearers. Thank you. No foreign coins please.