Updated post Wed, 25 Mar 2015 at 12:49 p.m.
[todayifoundout.com]
With a self-imposed aim to keep rates rises to no more than 3%, the council still needed to find millions of dollars in savings each year for the next decade.
### ODT Online Wed, 25 Mar 2015
Council accused of being in denial over long-term plan
By Chris Morris
Councillors say the Dunedin City Council is in “denial” over the need to raise rates, or cut services, to plug a $68 million budget shortfall over the next decade. The claims came amid warnings from Crs Aaron Hawkins and Jinty MacTavish yesterday, as councillors met to sign off on a public consultation document summarising the council’s long-term plan.
Read more
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Quelle surprise…. it’s not like these latest mumblings from Councillors on DCC budgets and projections is “News!” to the Dunedin ratepayers and residents who closely follow Council fortunes.
What IS news is the “greenie sustainables” of Greater Dunedin have finally woken up!
Is there a political split forming in Greater Dunedin? – when indeed, historically, we’ve been told by the ‘loose connection with incorporated society’ that its members have no shared policy, that their elected representatives are free to (think) and vote independently…. with some cohesion, nevertheless.
Well might Cr Lee Vandervis provide a standing ovation to Cr Aaron Hawkins’ voicing of major concerns. It was incumbent on Cr Jinty MacTavish, practically and politically… to agree with her Green Party confederate.
Interesting times. Wait for the YouTube video.
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Dunedin City Council Extraordinary Meeting 24 March 2015 at 12 noon
Council Chamber, Municipal Chambers
█ Agenda – Council – 24/03/2015 (PDF, 28.3 KB)
Extraordinary Meeting
Agenda Item 4
ADOPTION OF DRAFT LONG TERM PLAN 2015/16 – 2024/25 SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS AND CONSULTATION DOCUMENT
Report from the General Manager Services and Development (Simon Pickford). Refer to pages 4.1 – 4.8.
Supporting documents and consultation document circulated separately and are also available on the Dunedin City Council website.
Reports and recommendations contained in this agenda are not to be considered as Council policy until adopted.
█ Report – Council – 24/03/2015 (PDF, 176.8 KB)
Adoption of Draft Long Term Plan 2015/16 – 2024/25 Supporting Documents and Consultation Document
█ Report – Council – 24/03/2015 (PDF, 2.8 MB)
Adoption of Draft Long Term Plan 2015/16 – 2024/25 Supporting Documents and Consultation Document
Attachment 7 – Dunedin City Council Draft Long Term Plan Consultation document for adoption 24 March 2015
█ Report – Council – 24/03/2015 (PDF, 2.4 MB)
Adoption of Draft Long Term Plan 2015/16 – 2024/25 Supporting Documents and Consultation Document
Draft Infrastructure Strategy for adoption 24 March 2015 (replaces previously issued document)
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Related Posts and Comments:
12.3.15 Snaky Stedman —not answering … questions ratepayers must ask
4.3.15 DCC internal audits
20.2.15 Audit NZ making up for previous huge inadequacies over DCC books ?
21.1.15 Dunedin City Council to set rates WAY ABOVE….
21.11.14 Stadium Review: Mayor Cull exposed
19.11.14 Forsyth Barr Stadium Review
31.10.14 Whaleoil on “dodgy ratbag local body politicians” —just like ours at DCC
28.5.14 DCC: Audit and risk subcommittee
31.3.14 Audit services to (paying) local bodies #FAIL ● AuditNZ … LynProvost
26.2.14 DCC: New audit and risk subcommittee a little too late !!
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
What if? Dunedin... 
The younger Councillors have just woken up to the fact, that they will be the ones there in years to come. Having to take the flak for what their older counterparts are now setting them up for. By then the olds themselves will be long gone to hibernate in Wanaka and Queenstown.
Do I sense mutiny in the ranks? Crs Hawkins and MacTavish, as normally slavish advocates of all things green and sustainable as set down by their ‘Great Leader’ are openly revolting (not personally) and challenging the direction of this latest joke, the Long Term Plan, which makes ‘mawkish’ references to the city’s debt position. Cr Hawkins describes it as ‘denial’, and well he might. Cr Vandervis gives a standing ovation based on the faint hope that reason may be awakening in these young heads. Next thing there could be a rethink on such hideous burdens as the stadium, minority pressure groups demands such as cycleways and swimming pools, all of which are bringing the citizens’ grief and financial pain. Oh, that such wonders would come about.
This term jumped out at me – “loose connection”. It explains a lot. Failure to achieve joined-up thinking, blowouts, persistent failures that have been too hard – and endlessly expensive – to diagnose let alone fix. Loose connections are not desirable in councillors. We need them running on all cylinders, lights on steadily during hours of indebted darkness.
Cr Thomson talks about [if the transfer of $30 million of stadium debt to the council’s books] ‘was ignored’, to compare “apples with apples”. It appears to do with more about sour grapes than apples.
Poor old Kate in her struggle to be positive thought that the Council’s debt needed to be considered in light of its assets.
Anybody care to explain that one?
Kate could also take a cautious peep at its assets in light of its liabilities that contribute to ever-increasing debt. Or she could keep on being loosely connected…………
………..flickering in the fog.
Simple, Simon, (couldn’t resist that) Kate uses the asset to debt mantra like she even understands it. Like CEO Bidrose claims the assets are here and the debt is here. The two are equitable? Show me the convertibility, if the bank called in the debt, which assets could be sold for cash to balance the debt called? Therein lies the fiction of balance sheets. Cr Thomson talks of “apples with apples”, but does not differentiate between sound, ripe and rotten.
The word on Bath St is that a certain asset is being considered as an income earner. Roads are being seriously considered to become toll roads. Especially one particular tourist route.
Watch this space for further info.
Calvin. If only the council could only keep it simple.
Now, about Daaave’s “aspirations for investment” (read: Hopes in Hell)…. “to get the best value over time for the ratepayers’ dollars” (
Robin HoodRonald Biggs)…. “Our Financial Strategy imposes a 3% rate increase limit unless there are exceptional circumstances” (NZ Zero Inflation)…. “we have identified several projects which we have included as unfunded items, for example contributing financially to lighting for the University of Otago Oval and working with the Mosgiel community to develop a new aquatics facility” (RORTS by Professional Sport)….At lower Pitt St, as I typed that a lounge visit by a noisy Fantail, prophetic.
Here comes rain, flood, Dunedin is DOOM.
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DCC DRAFT Long Term Plan 2015/16 – 2024/25
It is good that Aaron and Jinty have spoken out and as Simon says they would be acutely aware, as the next generation, of how this debt debacle will hit their generation of potential voters.
I get the increasingly disturbing impression the Cull/ Bidrose team have given up trying to make a difference.
They are tired and worn down by vested interests. It is easier to give in.
The infighting and attempt to shut Lee Vandervis down, the loose and patronising talk of Sue Bidrose leaving the job by Wilson and Thomson…. has she said so?…. and the stalled process of transparency via Information requests and the Auditor’s criticism of inadequacies in the Draft Ten Year Plan seem to point to a council under seige.
In this scenario the pressured key players lose faith in themselves and the people lose faith in them.
Where is Hilary Calvert? She is Deputy Chair of the Finance Committee. She campaigned hard for the council on her financial business/lawyer acumen and to bring accountability to the council table. She is now quiet… along with Doug Hall whom we hear nothing from except for his beef with the council over Anzac Ave.
Hilary Calvert is either not being reported or has she nothing of value to say? The last thing I heard from her was her photo opportunity stunt for a Brendan McCullum Drive to raise her profile for the Mayoralty next year.
Peter, from what I can tell, Hilary Calvert isn’t often reported and also she has been ineffective at getting anything changed. Her comments last year about stadium finances have been either uninformed or in collaboration with the CEO’s stadium misinformation policy. She seems to have a sensible attitude to most of the issues, but lags behind Sustainable Jinty as far actual achievements. Hilary can learn from Jinty (as in tactics, techniques and procedures). It is time that Hilary and Doug Hall show us that they can get things done.
At a Council meeting (16/3/15) she was vigorous in her questioning of Grant McKenzie and Graham Crombie (Mr Tomato) about the Noble subdivision cover-up. Also clear in their criticism was Mike Lord and of course, Lee Vandervis. The result of this talking was nothing – no motions moved and no changes to the Delta Statement Of Intent (not yet, anyway). If you want to see the YouTube of this meeting, then you can’t. It is DCC policy to delay publishing these videos until they are no longer news-worthy. Look in a few weeks.
Nevertheless JimmyJones, the videos do get published and I watch every last minute of them. But then I used to sit in on many council meetings too (note past tense since reliance on YouTube) – the videos are never too late. There is no DCC policy to delay videos airing. Any delay is more likely due to low resources at Ch39 in turning them around.
Elizabeth, be tuned into to CH39 Dunedin Television today (Saturday, 1300) for the full version of the Tuesday (24/3/15) Council meeting (draft LTP for approval after failed audit). CH39 are quite prompt to get these broadcast, but for me the random delays for the YouTube videos to be published is unacceptable. The DCC policy is that they have no deadlines or targets for the YouTube vids (as of 2014). The last two available vids took 3 weeks and 7 weeks to appear.
Hilary Calvert did speak at the meeting and was not reported. Judge for yourself when the meeting video comes out. She seems to me to be asking extremely perceptive questions about finances in a very determined and persistent manner. But the more detailed financial stuff is far beyond me. Pictures are much easier to understand So more accurate graphs please, as suggested by Cr Vandervis.
Neither has Hilary bothered to reply to my email asking whether or not an empirical data exercise was in fact carried out to support the claim in the Stadium Review that this facility would generate $60M pa into the Dunedin economy. I now know from another source that this recommendation was not carried out in time for the draft LTP to be debated and put out for consultation. As I have said before this “albatross” is dragging us down and the Council (like the SDHB) lacks the fair-minded leadership to address the financial deficit that ensures that the Dunedin ratepayer and potential patient of Dunedin Hospital doesn’t suffer in the future through no fault of their own.
█ Footage of Crs Hawkins (denial), MacTavish (millions to cut), Vandervis (ovation) and Wilson (growth). The bottom link is a sanitised version from Tuesday.
{Comment relocated. -Eds}
Diane Yeldon
Submitted on 2015/03/26 at 5:48 pm | In reply to Elizabeth.
Still am glad you posted the links to the Channel 39 coverage of the meeting before they changed. Because it’s very interesting to see how the video recording of the meeting is edited. It seems to me they cherrypick anything that could look ‘newsworthy’, ie preferably councillors looking or sounding like they want to kill one another. But flowery, rhetorical soundbites will do, especially anything negative and perhaps likely to alarm ratepayers and residents. (Pay attention to the Voice of Doom.) Cr Hawkins’ speech was good both in substance, rhetoric and in delivery. It looked prepared to me but no harm in that. He is one of the few Councillors who does not mumble indistinctly, with voice trailing off inaudibly at the end of the sentences.
We have heard that the ticketing for such events and others is planned to be taken away from the Regent Theatre with the loss of about three jobs. They are going to do it at the stadium. Not central or convenient…. with the threat of being fined $65 for your trouble if you are parked there too long! Apparently legal action against the council is in the wings.
How dumb is this.
Peter – that is the dumbest thing Terry Davies has thought up yet. The bugger. Hope someone sues the pants of him/DVML (however the action is aimed).
Comment at ODT Online:
I’m just shocked and stunned
Submitted by Albert Square on Wed, 25/03/2015 – 4:07pm.
I’m in shock that Councillor Vandervis was allowed to stay. I mean really, did nobody feel threatened when he rose to his feet and clapped loudly? Was nobody deeply offended some distant Dorset or Himalayan family connection was being mocked?
Maybe the other councillors have finally started to worry about real council business and not waste time with petty games at last.
I watched the video. I too was shocked. This time, unlike when he was across the room from the fearful tremblers, when he stood up there were councillors to the left of him, councillors to the right. Was the video cut? Did they omit the part when paramedics rushed in with smelling salts and handed out cards advising where the Workplace Violence counsellors would be in place to see “victims” as soon as the meeting was over?
They don’t like Cr Vandervis speaking LOUDLY, but as a Sound and Lighting expert you would expect that, this time, he had the right equipment to measure the appropriate decibel levels re his clapping. Especially given he is a tall, strong, well-built man with BIG HANDS.
LOL Peter, don’t give us ideas.
I know I’m going on a bit but Cr Vandervis commented on the x-axis of the graph being compressed, seriously falsifying this visual information. I wonder if the reporter (Chris Morris) knows what an x-axis is.
There can be justice. I suspect that National’s woes in Northland are largely associated with Kaipara and similar stunts. Peters has consistently been the only politician who has shown any interest at all in the local rip-off going on there. The previous incumbent seems to have been deeply involved in the retrospective legislation that put his own ratepayer constituents back in ‘the jug’ for council debt payment (fleecing).
Osborne is in trouble I suspect largely as an outcome of the local perception that National has connived in the real time and retrospective screwing of ordinary local people. Perhaps Bill English’s burblings this morning about the fact that, unlike Peters, Osborne had ‘deep local connections to make things happen through leadership and influence’ will be the last nail in his (Osborne’s) coffin, via the easy inference that they intend to deliver more of the same to the happy residents of Northland. I suspect that people are voting for Peters precisely because he has no liking or connectivity with the local Good ol’ Boys. A bit like Shadbolt when he first turned up in Invercargill.
The last poll (this morning) put Peters at 53%, 20% ahead of his rival. Labour’s candidate stated on National Radio that she is not even on the general roll to vote in the constituency in this by-election – she is on the Maori roll. I can hardly see how this would help her cause as she campaigns to act as a general roll representative MP, but I guess that if it leads to the result I’m hoping for, that’s OK.
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{More here. -Eds}
A lot of non NZ First people will be rooting for Peters. You have got to admire the guy’s guts in sticking his neck out for this seat and likely now to win it.
The National Party now describe themselves as the underdog. With their behaviour, by cynically trying to bribe the voters, I think they would better be described as dogs. With Winston lifting his leg over all over them.
In the table (http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/337179/council-accused-being-denial-over-long-term-plan) showing the projected rates rises alongside the shortfalls for the DCC 10 year draft annual plan, it is interesting to do a very simple calculation. From the table, the average yearly rates rise over the 10 years is 3.68% and the average yearly shortfall is $6.8 million.
What does this mean in real terms?
Firstly, $1 million equates to a 1% rates rise so the average yearly $6.8 million shortfall equates to an additional 6.8% rates rise.
Add the 6.8% onto the 3.68% and we have a total average of 10.48% rates rise every year for the next 10 years. And this means rates would double (according to the Rule of 72) within 7 years unless they can find some savings ie efficiencies…..BUT remember they have already been efficient in finding efficiencies…..OR they cut services….OR they sell assets…BUT do they have assets that are not either loaded with debt or loaded with current “bad debt”.
Politically, this is untenable so they have kicked the can down the road and loaded the shortfall in the second 5 year period.
I hope there are enough councillors who have at least a basic understanding of the implications of this budget.
Note: The above is a simplistic calculation as it does not take into account compounding effects. Take them into account and the figures are yet higher.
For years and years every time an annual or long term plan is set, the DCC staff have managed to miraculously find savings. Every year. But if there is an expectation that these savings are going to be regularly found then why aren’t those savings being found now. Short answer is that they are not. The table of required savings is simply another way of saying that these amounts are going to have to be found and the easiest way to do that is to simply, as Bev points out, convert every million of savings that aren’t able to be found to a 1% rise in rates. Even then, when inflation is running at way under 3% on an annual basis, every percentage point between the actual cost of inflation and this 3.6% is EXTRA money being spent within the DCC. So if inflation is running at 1.6% for example, then the DCC costs are actually being inflated by 2% or $2 million every year – and this amount has been compounded for years. So when the DCC miraculously finds “savings” of $2m, it hasn’t actually done anything.
The other thing that really assists the DCC in its mission of smoke and mirrors is constantly referring to “core debt”. This is simply BS. Every dollar of debt that is ultimately able to be sheeted home to the ratepayer is core debt and that includes all the subsidiaries. Time for this to be exposed for what it is.
Lastly, I see that Cr Kate Wilson is clinging to the old refrain of asset to debt ratio to justify her position of not being worried. When will she learn that the stadium is not an asset but a liability? In any sense of the word.
Thanks Bev – this appears particularly poisonous against ratepayers and residents – see the recent floating of, say, a 30% rates increase to commercial ratepayers at QLDC…. this should make us doubly aware of what’s ahead at Dunedin, given the consolidated debt level and Cull’s shonky plan to continue spending on ludicrous items for INVESTMENT. Sadly, the Mayor is listening to, or being told what to do by the GOBs and Greenies….same/different people that invented stadium, lost Carisbrook, new cycleways, Delta subdivisions, new Mosgiel pool and lighting for Otago Cricket, and more … Items of expenditure, more by corruption and fraud, to be disclosed.
### dunedintv.co.nz March 27, 2015 – 5:52pm
Residents asked to weigh-in on DCC’s draft long term plan
Dunedin residents are being asked for feedback on the city council’s draft long term plan. The document lays out DCC budgets for the next decade, and outlines how local government debt will be reduced. It also sets limits on the rates locals will pay.
Mayor Dave Cull is urging members of the public to have their say, as he says feedback is crucial to the development of the plan.
Ch39 Link [no video available]
In the ‘Snapshot’ of Dunedin’s Long Term Plan 2015/16 -2024/25 Consultation Document, Dave Cull’s message opens and closes with the admonition that they are working to make Dunedin one of the world’s great small cities. Well, he’s got the ‘making small’ bit right at least. They’re proposing a number of ‘modest’ new investments, including speeding up the Portobello Road safety improvements (rephrase that, ‘reworking a monumental cock-up.’), improving the central city. providing a community complex in South Dunedin and supporting the Therapeutic Pool, Gigatown and new Otago Museum developments. Well that should about do it. Roll on the award for BLT in the world. NO! not ‘bacon lettuce tomato’, stupid.
Meantime the debt is going to be reduced and limits set on rates. Doesn’t actually stipulate those limits but the meaning is there. The debt reduction is the interesting one, with, at around $600 million and interest at 5% the fact that $30m pa leaves the city’s coffers as interest and departs the town, it doesn’t seem to occur to Dave that is unsustainable. Not with the stadium bleeding its guts all over the place and DCHL out of control with its high salaried manager compounding Delta’s debt by the $millions. Then there is the huge infrastructure renewal requirements due to decades of lack of maintenance. My guess is that this plan will be like all the others since the turn of the century and become obsolete before the ink is dry. Still, it gives them something to do for half a year at least.
Why on earth would ODT Online close the “denial” thread to comments, given this amazing democratic society we have at Dunedin ???
█ http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/337179/council-accused-being-denial-over-long-term-plan#comment-69727
Could it be that some of those Good Old Boys that you refer to, work for Allied Press and don’t cope well with criticism?
The council and the ODT rely on each other. They also manage each other. This thread closure could possibly be from the council. Things are obviously at crisis point there. The Vandervis distraction shows an illness. A kind of banding together to overcome by finding difficult external enemies that question them. The end result is sides are taken with the wrong people and good people get sucked into the bog they have created. They have by then lost their perspective on why they are there. Ethics go out the window and life becomes more miserable as game playing takes hold and eventually unravels them.
Maybe it was my response to Diane where I argued it was more likely a case of “I’ve got mine” combined with plain selfishness – which got in before it was closed but wasn’t published.
But frankly that was pretty innocuous – more likely I suspect one of those people I mentioned gave one of his mates at the ODT a call asking for the thread to be nobbled – obviously the local rugby elites have pretty thin skins and are still sensitive to criticism about their money grab from the ratepayers.
Now that the ORFU is flush, pulling in more than $1 million a year of profit, they have a choice, keep holding black tie events handing each other shiny awards or pay the money they blithely promised the ratepayers of Dunedin they would contribute to building their rugby stadium.
Yes Mike, when they were broke there was a feeble excuse for not paying – though they could still have shown willing by having sausage sizzles and suchlike small scale fund raisers. “Now that the ORFU is flush, pulling in more than $1 million a year of profit,” as you say, they’re clearly giving Dunedin’s ratepayers the two-finger salute. Oddly, our councillors aren’t as upset by that as they are by Lee Vandervis speaking loudly while standing.
Maybe because they don’t want to have the “rugby community’ to be put under any pressure, poor little sweethearts. I remember the same poor little sweethearts were extremely aggressive and full of ad hominem attacks on ODT online when the public debate was whether Dunedin should build the Stadium. I was a DCC candidate for Hills Ward in 2004, not because I wanted to get in ( God forbid!) but because I had worked out that my activism days were not going to over here after all and being a candidate is a good way to get to know the scene as a newcomer. (Not that I wasn’t taking it seriously – it’s illegal to fool around with the Electoral Act, McGilligudy Serious Party and Blokes’ Liberation notwithstanding.)
The atmosphere at the candidates’ meetings I went to was full of menace. There were people present who I could just tell were waiting to tear candidates to pieces if they blasphemed against the Great God “Rugby”.
Not so brave now, are they?
Not much of upstanding role models for the young men of the future, are they?
Great models for 2 year olds though. Bloated toddlers, gimme gimme. Mine! Waaaahhhh! Me want, me want NOW. MINE!!!!
There are a number of interesting parasites of insects that derange the minds of their hosts usually with results beneficial to the parasite, but lethal to the host. Here is a description of one of them.
“Females of the Costa Rican wasp Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga lay their eggs on the abdomens of unlucky orb spiders called Plesiometa argyra. After living off its host for a few weeks, the wasp larva injects a chemical into the spider that makes it build a strange, new kind of web, unlike anything it’s built before. But this new web isn’t for the spider: It’s meant to support the cocoon that the wasp larva will build after finally killing and eating the spider.”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141031-zombies-parasites-animals-science-halloween/
As it is with insects, so it may be with large organisations. The DCC has been showing signs of serious organisational derangement for a number of years with massive expenditures on frothy and unnecessary high ticket items that are not part of its core function and unfortunately expensive transactions with third parties. Its fiscal bodily juices have thus drained away and have been incorporated into other bodies that have benefited from these behaviours.
Parasites that kill or hopelessly debilitate their host obviously have to look for new healthier hosts when matters reach a crisis point. One can observe transitional behaviours like this rather delightful character described in the same source above:
“Hairworms have a perpetual challenge: They infect landlubbing insects like crickets, but the parasites must make their way to an aquatic habitat in order to reproduce….Hairworms produce mind-controlling chemicals that cause their cricket host to move toward light. Because water bodies reflect moonlight, this often sends crickets toward lakes and streams. The crickets jump in and drown, and the hairworms emerge, ready to find their next victim.”
It thus behooves us to be alert for any other very large and apparently healthy local organisations that are critical to this community which may start to display deranged behavioural patterns similar to those that have been previously exhibited by the DCC. While it may be ordinary common-or-garden managerial derangement, it may be that they may have become infected by some route.
Has anybody seen reports of any any organisational behaviours like this recently? Things like announcements of multi-million expenditures on frothy items that are very far from the core business of the organisation? Derangement diagnosis may be confirmed if the organisation is at the same time complaining that it is unable to sustain its core activities due to fiscal pressures.
Hey! The Otago Cricket Assoc. fits the bill Rob, it needs light to find its water and it is in the process of chemically changing its hosts habits towards being attracted to light. A real ‘frothy’ item. Strange that.