I have not seen one councillor bring up the most efficient way to reduce debt and avoid rates rises in this city _ and that is to reduce the staff numbers at Tauranga City Council.
This is just so difficult to write but the good folk down Rotorua way seem to have it all over those of us in Tauranga.
Maybe it's the sulphur in the air but they absolutely cane us when it comes to important matters.
Example one is tourism.
They flog us so badly in that department, I am ashamed every time I go over there and am asked where I live.
Example two is their reaction to debt levels.
The good people of Rotorua are up in arms about their debt and new mayor Steve Chadwick and her council are foaming at the collective mouth about its size, holding a review into whether elected members were misled about it.
They are looking at major cutbacks there in a bid to rein in what they see as a massive and unaffordable level of debt.
So much so they are considering making 50 council staff redundant to achieve that.
And do you know what their debt level is?
It is only about $185 million.
If Tauranga only owed $185 million I'd be dancing in the streets, saying we were sitting pretty. However, we do not.
Our "official" debt level is twice that amount and the real debt level - as signed off by Mayor Stuart Crosby and former chief executive Leigh Auton in 2012 - was in council documents as $470 million.
And that is real-world debt, not the mumbo-jumbo debt that council bureaucrats use to camouflage the situation.
I have been watching our councillors' mission to cut debt and I have been less than impressed.
They are tinkering with the issue, rather than getting stuck in and solving it.
We are potentially looking at a major rates rise - the exact suggestion varies so wildly there is little point in trying to pin it down.
On top of that, Councillor Gail McIntosh came up with a $200 levy per household to reduce debt and, while that is harsh on poor ratepayers, it is also practical.
But it has to be a special debt-reduction levy that can be used only to pay down our horrendous debt.
A proviso of such a levy must be that council may not then re-borrow that money for another spending spree.
I see, sadly, councillors are looking to permanently park the city's Mobile Library - a move that would save an estimated $86,000 a year. They say it's either that, or not expand Greerton's library.
Well, in my view council can have both.
In order to save $86,000 all they need to do is get rid of one worker whose annual cost to ratepayers is $86,000.
But for some reason I have not seen one councillor bring up the most efficient way to reduce debt and avoid rate rises in this city - and that is to reduce the staff numbers at Tauranga City Council.
A farcical audit last year saw the council spend a lot of money to assess staffing, only to end up with five more employees.
People employed by the council-controlled organisations don't count towards the employee numbers.
This city needs a staff audit - an independent one answerable to ratepayers.
During last year's election, many of the current councillors agreed the city needed to hack back its debt and, privately, agreed the best way to achieve that was to reduce staff levels at TCC.
For, while they can tinker at the edges of debt by reducing maintenance of parks and gardens, or by killing off a fabulous Mobile Library service that caters for many schools and less mobile citizens, they will be saving only a fraction of what they need to reduce spending by.
Have a think on this, folks: A third of your rates goes to keep the city running. A quarter goes to pay interest on debt. Another third goes to pay wages at the city council.
About $38 million a year.
Put another way, the higher the staff costs the higher your rates have to be.
I'd be very, very surprised if staff levels could not take a sizeable cut without doing any damage at all to how this city is run.
As long as those cuts are in the right spots, of course.
An independent auditor will be the best judge.
Richard Moore is an award-winning Western Bay journalist and photographer.
richard@richardmoore.com
Both are training under Patrick Lam at Patrick’s Pies Goldstar Bakery in Tauranga.
