Editorial - Tuesday January 21, 2014

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

THE Far North seems to have slipped into some kind of parallel universe since the elections in October. The inescapable conclusion is that the previous council, which had spent much of its last two years extolling the virtues of 'fairer' rates and opened what might be regarded as Pandora's box by seeking permission to take over the Northland Regional Council's role, was responsible for some very serious, not to say expensive botch-ups.

The plan to sink a bore at Sweetwater to supply Kaitaia with water is clearly in some difficulty, after an investment by ratepayers of around $2.6 million.

The new Mayor is unable to say when, or even if, Kaitaia will ever see a drop of that water. As far as this newspaper is concerned there are still many more questions than answers in terms of that project, but it isn't looking good.

The council says it's currently facing legal issues, which apparently amount to the fact that it can't get access to the proposed bore site; the 'missing' $1.6 million that Mayor John Carter began seeking an explanation for prior to the election still hasn't been publicly explained; and what was described last year as little more than routine testing, aimed at placating bore owners in the Sweetwater area who reckoned turning water on for Kaitaia would run their bores dry, has yet to begin six months after it was originally scheduled.

The proposed sewerage scheme for Kerikeri also seems to be in trouble. The council's consultation process, wittily sold under the banner 'Let's talk crap,' might well prove to have been an expensive waste of time, given that a second deadline for claiming a $7 million government subsidy has seemingly passed.

No one within the council has expressed a view as to the likelihood of getting a third bite at that particular cherry, but it doesn't seem likely. If that $7 million has gone, that would seem to leave two choices - to forget about it, and put the money spent thus far down to experience, or to carry on without government assistance, the council raising the extra $7 million via a targeted rate, which isn't likely to sit well with Kerikeri ratepayers, or via a district-wide rate, which is going to attract a similar response throughout the district.

Then there's the Omapere i-Site debacle. Mr Carter has quite reasonably described that as a hangover from the old previous council (as are Sweetwater and Kerikeri's sewerage scheme), but the fact remains that the final step (so far) in an increasingly ludicrous process was taken in November, a month after the new council was elected.

About the only positive thing that could be said about Omapere is that it isn't as expensive as Sweetwater and Kerikeri might prove to be. But how the council, staff and elected members, could put ratepayers in this situation beggars belief.

The story so far seems to be that the council built the i-Site, opened in 2010, on land it did not own as a public/private partnership. That alone might have raised a small red flag, but obviously didn't, in that it presumed on-going goodwill on the part of the owners of the land.

Then the local Four Square store burned down, and the council, not unreasonably, offered the operator the bulk of the space in the i-Site to set up shop, temporarily. The motivation for that appeared to be to allow the business to continue providing groceries and a mail service, in the best interests of the community.

Then the owner of the Four Square building built another one, at which point the operator should have vacated the i-Site. But he hasn't. Apparently baulking at the rent his landlord was asking for, he asked the council if he could stay where he was. Inexplicably, the council said yes.

It's no wonder some people in the South Hokianga are grumpy. They have every right to be, as does every other Far North ratepayer, who presumably funded the i-Site (to the tune of $800,000). And now the council has agreed to lease it to a grocer for six years, with two six-year rights of renewal, at a rate that will reportedly return an annual surplus of $13,000 to the council.

At that rate it will take the council almost 62 years to recoup its capital expenditure, by which time it will be all but worthless.

So what's going on? We don't really know. As of last week Mr Carter was unable to say specifically how the i-Site had been funded, or why the council had voted in favour of the grocer. He did say that he went to the council's first meeting after the election with no knowledge of the i-Site issue whatsoever; the same no doubt applied to the other newly-elected members, one of whom (Cr Collard) wasn't there.

Mr Carter effectively said he had been blindsided, but those who were re-elected the month before can't say that. If they were equally in the dark they had been seriously let down by staff; if they knew what they were doing then it was they who let down the South Hokianga and the district's ratepayers.

Now a working party has been formed to 'examine the options,' chief of which might well be to build another i-Site. If that eventuates, hopefully provision will be made to prevent a future council from leasing it to the TAB or a $2 shop.

Meanwhile Mr Carter is being very circumspect, which is hardly surprising. The good news is that he has initiated an investigation, a process that will hopefully conclude within weeks rather than months, to find out exactly who know and did what in a number of areas. That investigation will hopefully provide some answers, although it would seem foolish to bet against it raising even more questions. How far the ripples will travel is hard to say at this point, although at the time of writing they show no sign of having run their course.

One question that may need to be answered at some point is whether the councillors of that period have any personal liability for losses that might have been incurred by the ratepayers.

There is a good deal of water to go under the bridge before getting to that point, but there is legal provision for personal liability, and that should be of interest to Far North property owners, many of whom have found paying their rates increasingly difficult over recent years, and who were never given any reason to suspect that they might have been paying more than they should.

Certainly last year's election campaign offered nothing that this newspaper was aware of in terms of hints that all might not be well. Cr Mate Radich, and to some extent Cr Colin Kitchen, did begin expressing concerns over Sweetwater well before and during the campaign period, the response, from the council (or at least with the council's knowledge and apparent approval), being to lock him out of the proposed bore site.

And all this while dairy farmers, foresters and quarry operators were being told that they weren't paying their fair share of rates, and we were being told that a unitary authority would launch the Far North into a much more professional, effective era. All the while, it seems, our money was being lost on a grand scale.

For the moment we must be patient, but hopefully not for long.