Once upon a time, Rugby louts and owners of industrially-zoned land at Dunedin decided they deserved a new Rugby stadium and some personal spending CASH! (ie ratepayer money)
It wasn’t long before DCC was vigorously lobbied from within and without by slimy fatcats, to build a Hopeless Stadium.
The evil plan was to saddle ratepayers with outlandish debt for decades and decades.
It also transpired that the Chin Council thought only slightly about lines in the sand but agreed ‘it’s perfectly alright to rob the poor to support the well-off’ —the practice continues to this very day, Mayor Cull’s merry band of dimwits subsidise DVML and have recently transferred $30m of Hopeless Stadium debt back onto the DCC books.
Going back a treacle-filled step or two… the spendthrift Carisbrook Stadium Charitable Trust (CST), headed by Malcolm Farry, became agent to the Council via a Service Level Agreement (SLA), to see in the Hopeless Stadium construction project and associated fundraising.
[Aside, like it didn’t matter: Farry in his construction safety hat and dayglo vest failed miserably at raising public donations for the Hopeless Stadium.]
Long short… regular as well as ‘other’ payments were made by DCC to CST and co-greedy sods without much corroborating paperwork.
Despite non-accountability and lack of transparency, and the odd crucial missing document, there’s a stash of CST files kept “in storage” somewhere – files to drive a bulldozer through, lawfully the property of the Council, paid for by ratepayers.
Turns out two of DCC’s most senior executives, with Malcolm Farry, appear to have no interest whatsoever in surrendering the files for independent forensic audit. They’ll only retrieve file boxes in batches, while pedalling strongly backwards.
The files are not sealed, seized or safe. Where are they? DCC will not say. Farry won’t say. Fairytales are being told.
The files were long ago officially requested through the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA) by Dunedin resident Bev Butler. They’re also subject to the Public Records Act.
The Ombudsmen’s Office is involved, due to deliberate lack of co-operation shown by CST and DCC to supply copy of the original files to Ms Butler in a timely manner.
Have the files been thrown into plastic shopping bags, shredded or dumped? We simply don’t know.
CST and DCC are equally culpable, they’re both prepared to lie and defer – What if? can only imagine the files might be as tidy as this.
If it takes a court order…..
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
*Image: clipart.org – Filing Cabinet Overload
What if? Dunedin... 