Letter: And then - nothing happens

Deputy Mayor Tania McInnes has not impressed a reader with her inaction.

In reading the latest article by Tania McInnes, deputy mayor, 'Moving forward together' (June 29) I have formed the view she must be living on a different planet with a different reality system when she claims staff are highly talented and gifted, who act as 'enablers' for ratepayers.

Let me provide some real examples of staff indifference and gross incompetence.

1. In personally organising Corrections to have pre-release prisoners pick up street rubbish some two years ago and passing the information to a senior council employee (ultimately including being asked to personally erect 'Keep Kerikeri clean' signs), and then waiting over two years for ANY actual outcome, I was finally advised the employee 'forgot' to do anything. Outcome - well, nothing actually.

2. In having recently picked up some 10 bags of street rubbish from our local street (and provided the bags free from our family resources), I suggested to a senior council employee they might like to pick up the rubbish from our home and analyse it. They said they would contact us to pick up the rubbish. Outcome - nothing after 10 days. Not a word or response, then or now.

3. I was similarly recently witness to an enterprising auction business offering auction services in Kerikeri in a recently abandoned building, previously used for some years (with appropriate council consents) some six days per week and 10 hours per day selling plants, outside furniture, garden tools, in fact anything that might sell, all with council consents in place.

The auction business merely wanted to use the same approved premises for one day every five weeks, to be confronted with a massive resource consent demand by the FNDC costing between $9 and $16,000 . It was bureaucracy gone mad. The business finally gave up in the face of this administrative lunacy, and Kerikeri lost a useful and beneficial service as a result.

As for Tania's claim of council being an 'enabler', I really must question her clarity of thought. It might in my opinion be a better use of her time if she got out in her kitchen and rattled her pots and pans instead of making such nonsensical claims.

4. Then, there is of course the developer who wanted to build a hotel in Kerikeri, finally giving up when the council's 'costs' were projected to be in the order of $1 million. He built retirement units instead.

Perhaps Tania should have a discussion with this developer about her claims of council being an 'enabler'. However, she should perhaps take an armed guard with her, given the content of the conversation I had with this developer.

5. And as for council now launching an inquiry regarding the very recent judicial decision surrounding a failure to offer equal opportunity to local contractors, with the resultant loss of quite possibly over $1m in unnecessary overpayments and punitive costs, costing ratepayers a fortune, I merely reflect on a council history going back over 30 years, where engineering contracts never went to public tender at all but were organised at the Opua Yacht Club between mates.

There is absolutely nothing new in the mate's rates processes alleged to exist in the FNDC, so ably supported by the recent scathing judicial decision. In my opinion it has been going on for years.

6. Of course one might also mention the 90K plus/minus the FNDC spent in an obscenely expensive and unnecessary analysis surrounding the need for swimming pools in the community (something the local community could have told them cost free!) only to see them allocate not one cent into a fund to create such badly-needed facilities, which begged the question as to why such monies might have 'somewhat obviously' been better spent on creating a start-up fund for such facilities.

The list is endless.

So what is the real truth? Well, the fact is that the FNDC has a long history of gross administrative incompetence, with many current staff sitting out their tenure until retirement, and when you couple that with meetings, chats, conferences, etc, all of which appear to achieve - 'well nothing actually' - it does make one wonder just how much ratepayers will tolerate until finally crying ENOUGH.

I am left with the very minor consolation surrounding three staff I recently came into contact with, all of whom actually did what they said they said they would do.
They stand as beacons in a sea of indifference and incompetence.

ROB SINTES
RD3 Kerikeri