Dialogue: Parish pumps spit in row round Waitomo

By KEVIN TAYLOR

Down at Waitomo Caves, the locals are restless. Claiming years of neglect by their council, they have voted to defect and join the neighbouring Otorohanga District Council.

Simmering discontent with the Waitomo District Council exploded last month, and the caves community committee is writing a secession plan it hopes to submit to the Local Government Commission by the end of this month.

The plan follows a fiery meeting on April 18 at which a vote was taken to defect to Otorohanga. At that meeting, Waitomo Mayor Steve Parry tactlessly told committee members that some were "behaving like spoiled brats" because they could not get their way.

It was an ill-advised comment.

Residents say their community has been neglected for years, despite the famous tourist icon drawing between 450,000 and 500,000 visitors a year and being worth tens of millions to the national economy.

"They take $120,000 in rates a year from this place and provide us with virtually nothing," says newly elected committee chairman Pat Carey. "We don't have public toilets, we don't have our streets swept, we don't have public rubbish bins provided."

Locals now want to align themselves with a council they say shares their vision for growth in tourism.

Mr Parry rejects the claims about lack of services, although it is hard to see how he can. Waitomo Caves has no sewerage scheme. Residents do the mowing, and the public lavatories are provided by the museum, which also provides the local information centre.

But the row really blew up publicly when the council wrote into its draft annual plan a proposal to cut the $15,000 it gives to Tourism Waikato. Mr Parry says it is time tourism stood on its own two feet, but it was a dim move which prompted Tourism Waikato to respond in an equally dim manner by removing any mention of the famous caves from its promotional material.

This was done supposedly to keep faith with the tourism body's funders, but pretending the glorious Waitomo Caves don't exist is petty and stupid. Overseas visitors don't care about squabbles between councils, their residents, and regional tourism bodies. They care only that they can get to the attraction, and, importantly for the tourism industry, they need to know it exists.

To add more confusion to this messy saga, the council has been accused of playing up the tourism funding decision by claiming the cut was the sole reason that locals started agitating for secession in the first place.

Mr Carey, one of the accusers, says the final straw was when councillors deleted hundreds of thousands of dollars earmarked for village development in the draft annual plan.

He cites as an example of neglect a development plan written by consultants four years ago which has sat on a shelf gathering dust. Defection supporters also argue they have more community of interest with Otorohanga, which is 10km away, than Te Kuiti, which is about 17km away.

Both the Waitomo and Otorohanga councils have just under 10,000 people, and questions have been raised in the past about their viability as stand-alone local authorities.

Clearly the Waitomo district is facing money problems. It has already trimmed a 9 per cent rise proposed for Te Kuiti back to 5 per cent. But forecasts are reportedly grim - a 10 per cent rate rise next year.

Mr Parry is already saying the caves residents' move to cede from the council could make the Waitomo district unviable. He argues that the defection plan could lead the commission to consider whether the Waitomo and Otorohanga councils should amalgamate.

The district, he says, cannot afford to lose a whole swathe of its northern territory to Otorohanga.

If Mr Parry is right, the Waitomo council will be fighting for its existence and its autonomy - and Otorohanga will as well.

Otorohanga Mayor Eric Tait supports a merger with the caves community if benefits to its ratepayers outweigh the cost. But they would not be welcome if it prompted a merger of the councils.

This stoush may end up benefiting nobody - and have unforeseen consequences.