Hutt Annual Plan 2002
by Christopher Paul


Hutt City has recently been through the formal processes of consultation that come up every year to spend about $80,000,000 of our rates money. The Annual Plan is for current spending and the Strategic Plan is for expenditure three to ten years into the future. Large amounts of money to be spent in the Annual Plan should properly go through the strategic planning process. This ensures that important projects are properly debated over a number of years.

The outgoing Auditor General, Mr David McDonald, recently made public comment that many Councils were not following procedures for full public consultation and due process to ensure that monies for the Annual Plan have been through the strategic planning process. It should also be noted that public consultation is one thing - actually listening to what the public has to say and acting on that feedback is something else.

This criticism must surely apply to the Hutt City Council in the recent planning round. Large projects such as the Hutt Park and the Dowse Gallery were unexpectedly inserted into the Annual Plan and projects such as the Walter Nash Stadium, which had been through the strategic planning process, had their money voted down. Hutt Park received a total of $1.9m and the Dowse Gallery $1m. Walter Nash needed a minimum of $1.4m to come up to 2,000 seats and to clean up facilities, yet received only $300,000 of expenditure that will be spent in an area that in the long-term plan is designated for another purpose.

Clearly there is no intention of upgrading Walter Nash, despite significant public support; including from netball, basketball and numerous other sporting and recreational bodies. Hutt Park received little public support and the $1.9m includes $350,000 to bulldoze a perfectly good trotting track. Much of the support for Dowse came as form letters, which were submitted with a covering letter from a Council Officer who has no business driving policy.

Not only did public consultation decisively reject pet projects such as Hutt Park, but the questionnaires, surveys and consultations were biased by the Officers in the first place to drive those pet projects. The mayor claimed that the results of this expensive public consultation process were "indecisive", yet in a Council meeting made the statement when recommending expenditure for Hutt Park that sometimes Council must exercise judgement to override public opinion. This for a project which had not been debated through the Strategic Plan.

The public clearly rejected rates increases of greater than 5.5% (80% rejection) and the nominal rates increase is supposed to be 5.7% as reported. However, the proposed sale of pensioner housing and the old bus terminal land at Eastbourne will just about double that in a one-off capital spendfest to finance these ill-conceived, elitist and unpopular projects.