No detailed analysis has been provided to back the bland assertion that jobs will be created.
What is certain is that two major
underperforming assets, the Odean Complex and the Seaview Marina (not to mention pensioner
housing) are to be on the auction block, despite any suggestion to the contrary, without
proper restructuring in the public eye. This secrecy is supposed to protect commercially
sensitive information, but it may be to protect maladministration, and it is a matter of
public record that the marina is at present leased at below market values. The Odean has
always been a white elephant which may now be sold, just when development is starting to
happen all around and it should be coming right. The process is now in train to run the
Seaview marina in aLATE. When a councillor attempted to ascertain the credentials of the
prospective directors the Mayor simply talked over the top of her.Local bodies may have a place in providing administration to support development in their area, but we have seen some of the types of gimme deals that get to be on offer. Recently a showcase boatbuilder in Auckland got an expensive piece of land for a fraction of its real value. We don't want this happening at our ratepayers expense here in Lower Hutt City.
What is needed is for the Council to stick to the knitting and attend to the detailed analysis of normal budget expenditure. The process was described as a committee of senior managers allocating monies in an ad hoc manner and jokes were bandied around about trimming a bit off the tree planting and adding a bit to the doggy poo. Yet under the 1974 Local Government Act there is a requirement to analyse the costs and benefits of all major financial decisions, including decisions not to spend money.
The Council spends in the normal course of events some $79,000,000 of the ratepayers money. A sizeable proportion of this is salaries. Yet the easily available published information does not give any detailed breakdown of the subdivisions of costs in the various categories of expenditure -the information presentation approach could be described as "minimalist". In particular there is certainly no inkling of measures of staff productivity rates.
When the Council sat for the first round analysis of these expenditures, whole sections involving millions of dollars had the pages turned in a matter of minutes. I couldn't imagine the board of directors of a private organisation being so cavalier about such large amounts of money. So much for analysis of detail.
A big area for attention is how allocation takes place between priorities for different categories of expenditure, or for competing projects within the same category of expenditure. For example would the reported saving of$I.8m on water corporatisation be cancelled out by price rises from the monopoly mentality which would inevitably follow -especially if privatised. Should the Council spend money on Hutt Park or on roads, and if on roads should the business driven Melling based cross valley link be ahead of the alternative and eminently sensible Maungaraki to Wainui option.
Some work was done in the area of funding priorities by the extreme right wing Informetrics organisation in the mid l 90's, but the project seems to have been shelved. I would like to see that work resumed, possibly with a more moderate W organisation like BERL. This is complex economic analysis that also has to have sophisticated value judgement input from Council Officers and elected politicians. Good technical/political input parameters give better results. Garbage in, garbage out.
But in the meantime a moratorium should be in place on rates increases in keeping with the "dominant team" pre- election promise of no rates increases. Additionally, the sales of the Odean and Marina should be frozen to enable proper scrutiny of their operations and to get them in good shape as working assets over the next few years.
I do not consider that key people have been in place for long enough to have a full grasp of the ramifications of all the actions proposed under the annual and strategic plans. Both of these need a much greater degree of refinement before implementation. There are some good possibilities to be explored. Politicians and the staff should work hard in the coming year to provide a more convincing proposal for the expenditure of such large amounts of money.