Tim Gilbertson
The best questions are seldom asked.
Try to answer to this one. A while ago we considered amalgamating all five Hawke's Bay councils.
No need, said most of the leaders. The status quo is fine. We work together like a horse and carriage, and in future we plan to work together even better.
There is no benefit at all in any shape or form in a shotgun marriage. Besides, we have LASS Ltd. LASS stands for Local Authority Shared Services.
It is, as its name suggests, a limited liability company set up by the five councils to investigate and action ways of saving money and increasing efficiency by combining functions and sharing services. A very worthy aim.
The company was assisted by the Winder Report, commissioned by the Hawke's Bay Regional Council some years ago.
The Winder Report recommended putting all five councils' roading activities into one department and doing the same for all the water and wastewater departments. This would save millions of dollars and make for a much better operation.
More savings down the track would come from merging rating, planning, computer services, building inspection, animal control, libraries, HR, and admin functions.
However, in a bizarre twist, the councils' five chief executives were appointed to run the company. The reason given was that they were best placed to manage the process because they were familiar with the organisations.
The real reason was that everyone knew that if they implemented the Winder Report and saved us all millions the question would be: Hey, that wasn't rocket science. Why didn't you highly paid clever people work that one out years ago?
Salaries would suffer, cushy jobs would disappear and politicians might lose elections.
So LASS has achieved very little over several years apart from producing reports that promise champagne and caviar the week after next.
Meanwhile, our leaders have told us that the councils are getting on famously and council co-operation has never been more effective or productive.
So here is the question. Given the love and affection between the councils, how is it that for 20 years the Hastings District Council could ignore the advice and instructions of the HB Regional Council and comprehensively fail to maintain their water supplies?
How is it that for the same period the HBRC failed in its statutory duty and allowed that to happen?
That studied neglect has resulted in an epidemic of waterborne disease that killed two people and left 5000 sick.
The idea that our councils work closely together to ensure our safety while effectively and efficiently governing Hawke's Bay is in tatters.
A senior staff member at Hastings District Council admits he was unaware of a document going back to the 1990s highlighting major problems with the security of the bores supplying water to Havelock North and Hastings.
How does that tally with all the palaver we were fed over the length of the amalgamation debate about how well they all worked together, and the same refrain we have heard ever since?
And now that the information is out, what is the response from the councils? So far nothing.
They have kicked for touch by holding an inquiry that will confirm what was known within days, if not hours, of the outbreak. That storm water infiltrated a faulty well head, overflowed down the casing and contaminated the bore while the sump pump was out of action due to the storm-induced power failure.
When the inquiry reports back, will anyone be sacked for incompetence? Will any elected representative accept responsibility for failing the community and resign? Will any leader admit that perhaps regional co-operation is not and has not been quite as wonderful as we have all been led to believe?
Will LASS be rejigged so that there is action and progress instead of job preservation and patch protection? Will Hawke's Bay move toward a modern responsive flexible governance regime that solves problems before they turn into nightmares?
Or will we sweep incompetence under the carpet and hope that somehow things will turn out all right?
The cost of investigating the campylobacter outbreak is well over a million and climbing like a homesick angel. If council co-operation was as rosy as we were led to believe, none of this would have happened.
Getting better isn't hard. The response last week to the fires was magnificent. A crisis contained and tragedy in the main averted.
If we can combine operations in the space of a morning to fight a major conflagration, why on earth can't we combine operations over the space of decades to achieve the promised benefits of council co-operation?
Those promised gains hover in a distant unsubstantiated future.
Someone should ask the question. And squeeze an answer out of the maze.
Tim Gilbertson is a farmer, former mayor of Central Hawke's Bay and former Hawke's Bay regional councillor. His column will appear every fortnight on a Saturday. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.