News

According to Deputy Mayor David Bublitz in an article in Stuff last month, the “Tuparikino Active Community Hub will be a game changer.”

Just 6 indoor multi use courts and a new carpark for $50 million, which may possibly attract people from out of town to visit New Plymouth to use them, or it may not.

The indoor courts themselves may not be a game changer, but the Sports Hub plan is definitely going to be a huge game changer for some followers of New Plymouth Sport.

Spot the elephant in the room in the NPDC site plan for the Sports Hub (photo on the right).

Right in front of the existing TSB Stadium is the brand new Arena.

The elephant in the room – where is the existing Public Stand to watch the races ? It is no longer there.

To the left of the new Arena is new permanent carparks. So where will the followers of New Plymouth Racing get to see their sport on Race Days ?
We got a reply to an OIA in late December which confirmed that the plan to put in the new Arena means the existing Public Race Stand will be removed.

When we asked how will racing customers see their sport the NPDC responded with “The event layout for race days will be determined by Taranaki Racing Inc.” Not sure where they think race day customers will see the races from with this plan, but the NPDC response clearly shows it is not of any concern to them.

Do you recall back in 2021 the Sports Hub was going to be amazing – there would be indoor courts – but phase one was going to be the turf areas.

In the NPDC’s own words in June 2023 “Taranaki’s young sports stars are crying out for more room to play and train”.

The 2021 plan talked about the likes of cricket pitches, soccer & hockey fields, a one stop place for kids to play all sorts of different sports, as well as indoor courts. $50 million for that concept – may be that could be justified.

But a plan that now has $50 million for one building with just 6 indoor courts, and a new carpark area, which knocks down another existing building which is widely used by local people, and visitors, putting money into the local economy – how is that a plan that works for all the community ?

At the Alliance we wondered how this project was going to cost $50 million for one building. The removal of the existing race stand will incur huge demolition costs.

We have to ask the question how on earth does the demolition of an existing, well maintained building, with local history and wide spread use by the New Plymouth public and visitors, how does that fit with the NPDC Zero Waste policy where we are no longer creating waste for the landfill.

We have bin inspectors for our bins at home - so we have to reduce our waste – the NPDC can knock over a complete useful building and send that to landfill and that’s okay ?

All for the sake of just 6 indoor multi use courts, with a $50 million price tag, which of course relies on the project actually coming in on budget ?

And this $50 million price tag will be new debt the NPDC will be taking on for you to pay through your rates and rents.

Do you think the 2021 Long Term Plan was a misrepresentation of what was going to be constructed with this Sports Hub project ?

We note the name is now “Active Community Hub,” with little mention of the word “Sport”. Is that because all the turf sport concepts have been removed and this is not the project the original submissions covered ? Is this actually a completely different plan but with the same price tag ? Does this misrepresent the submissions that were asked for back in 2021 ?

Did the 4,447 people who submitted on this project in 2021 make incorrect statements based on a different concept altogether ?

Remembering that around 30% of submitters did not agree with the concept back in 2021 – which included sports fields as phase one in the plan – which are no longer mentioned.

For the last few months we have been saying through our posts and blogs that we want to create a “Voice to be Heard” for New Plymouth Ratepayers.

We can tell you constantly what is not going right at the NPDC, but the only way that things will change is if lots of people who live in New Plymouth start telling our Council – Elected officials, and the up until now, faceless Executive Team – that we do not like how they are spending our very hard earned rates money.

If you do not want the NPDC to go ahead with this extravagant use of ratepayer money for the Tuparikino Active Community Hub please tell them you do not support them in one of the following ways:

• Email the council at enquiries@npdc.govt.nz
• Post a message on their Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/NewPlymouthDistrictCouncil/
• Email the Mayor, The Councillors, The CEO, and the Executive Leadership Team (Just copy the list below and paste that into the address line of a new e-mail).

If you are new to giving your opinion to the Council, and are not yet brave enough to use your full name, use just your first name in these ways:

• Ring the Council call centre on 759-6060 and tell them you do not support them starting on the Sports Hub project. When they ask for all your details, politely tell them you are only giving your first name, and their job as a council employee is to take your complaint and pass it on to the elected Mayor, Councillors and CEO.
• Write a note, put just your first name on it and hand deliver it in an envelope to reception at the NPDC.

What types of things might you say to the NPDC ?

I do not support the Tuparikino Active Community Hub project and I want it stopped.

I do not want the NPDC to borrow $50 million in new debt for a 6 court sports building and carpark.

I do not want the Public Race Stand removed from the racing club area.

Why is the NPDC demolishing a well used building and filling up Landfill with waste ? I do not want this project to start.

The NPDC have misled the New Plymouth public about what will be delivered with this project and I do not support you going ahead with it.

What was in the 2021 Long Term Plan with a $40 million budget is a lot more extensive than what you are now proposing to build in 2025 for $50 million. What you are now building is not the plan you received submissions for in 2021. You have misrepresented the original plan to the New Plymouth public and I want this project stopped.

The Council email addresses:

Council
neil.holdom@npdc.govt.nz
amanda.clintongohdes@npdc.govt.nz
anneka.carlson@npdc.govt.nz
bali.haque@npdc.govt.nz
bryan.vickery@npdc.govt.nz
david.bublitz@npdc.govt.nz
dinnie.moeahu@npdc.govt.nz
gordon.brown@npdc.govt.nz
harry.duynhoven@npdc.govt.nz
marie.pearce@npdc.govt.nz
max.brough@npdc.govt.nz
murray.chong@npdc.govt.nz
sam.bennett@npdc.govt.nz
tewaka.mcleod@npdc.govt.nz

Executive Team
gareth.green@npdc.govt.nz
jacqueline.baker@npdc.govt.nz
bernie.odonnell@npdc.govt.nz
helena.williams@npdc.govt.nz
sarah.downs@npdc.govt.nz
kathryn.scown@npdc.govt.nz

When you have taken action with the NPDC send us an email so we can remind the Council how many people don’t agree with this project going ahead.
Our e-mail address is:
ratepayersnp@gmail.com

Please also tell all your friends and family about this updated proposal by the NPDC and ask them to contact the Council if they are not happy with what is now being proposed.

We have some fantastic news to end the year.

Attached is a press release from Simeon Brown this week, as the Minister for Local Government, announcing “The Government has agreed to reforms that refocus local councils on delivering essential services and core infrastructure, spending responsibly, and operating under greater scrutiny”.

All the topics we have been investigating and raising concerns about.

There is also mention of removing references to the ‘four well-beings’ – these being the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of communities – and ensuring local councils get back to looking after the core infrastructure for their communities.

Changes to legislation for local councils are planned for 2025.

There is still plenty for us to be sharing and working to change before new legislation is passed but we are so pleased to see these changes being discussed at central government level.

We ran a post on Facebook in early November where a news item quoted how new cross council entities (in our case New Plymouth, Stratford and South Taranaki combined) can “Borrow up to 500% of operating revenue, almost double what they can borrow now” to upgrade their water infrastructure.

Currently with the Long Term Plan system they can’t borrow more than 135%.

We covered a story Glenn Maclean had written for Stuff in October this year, with options available for working collaboratively across the councils.

NPDC was keen to get together with Stratford and Hawera to discuss cost sharing across all 3 regions and had arranged meetings at the NPDC to get the ball rolling early on with how this could be done.

This prompted several of our team to see what the other councils are thinking about this issue so our Roving Reporters recently ventured down SH3 to meet with the Stratford Mayor and CEO. They had the opportunity to discuss how Stratford are progressing with the proposed new water plans for their region.

It was interesting to learn from this meeting that Stratford is below borrowings on their Balance Sheet for water assets, and are capable of this with only 50% of their ratepayers on Council water reticulation.

Stratford target all rates collected in respect of water in a consolidated fund for use with only water projects. With this careful management system Stratford are more than capable to stand alone going forward with the consents and reticulation systems that are currently in place.

There was discussion about the future waste water system when the current consents run out in 10 years, which may be an area with possibility of the regions working together.

Our team talked with the Stratford Mayor and CEO about the NPDC proposed new set-up covering representative numbers of each Council on a Board, or an administrative group. The Stratford viewpoint was there would need to be equal representation for each region if any of these groups were to be set up.

There are a lot of issues to be worked out across all three regions so the costs are spread equitably across the three Councils. The costs of water delivery, administration, plant, satellite offices, water departments and any extra staff all need to be considered and apportioned without any one region being worse off than they are at this point.

It was good to hear that all Councils in Taranaki currently co-operate on producing some commodities to get better prices.

The Alliance will continue to monitor and update you on the "Water done well" programme across our region.

We will also continue to monitor a Co-Governance model which is still part of discussions here in New Plymouth, long after the Taxpayers Union and the 3 waters roadshow tours put that model to bed prior to the last General Election.

Also in the news this week is an article about an NPDC Report showing a multi million dollar shortfall in the Draft Annual Report.

There is a Long Term Plan done every 3 years, and with the 2 years in between an audited report is done to see how that Long Term Plan is tracking. This is called the Annual Report, and the multi million dollar shortfall is in this years’ annual report.

We mentioned about the Fitzroy Steps the other day and will that budget blow out, but it seems budgets are not coming in as they should across multiple council budgets.

There are a lot of numbers in the article and we know some people see numbers and just don’t want to go any further. So we’ve summarised what’s in this article to a level that any household, business or farmer looks at on a day to day basis.

There is the money you bring in (income), the money you pay out (costs) and if things don’t add up, the amount you may have to borrow to cover the shortfall (loans).

So according to the numbers in this Post article, the NPDC had:

$20.7 Million less income come in
And, $24.8 Million more costs to pay out

They raided $3.4 Million from the Transport budget (that tin you have at home in the back of the pantry for emergencies) and this was used to prop up the increase in costs.

After that they paid out only $21.4 Million more in costs – but – there is $3.4 million less to spend on fixing the roads.

So all up, across all the different budgets, and the money that didn’t come in, and the extra expenses going out, the council ended up with a $37 million shortfall of what they had expected.

This is why the item this week about building the expensive steps in Fitzroy is important. $1.2M on the steps – may go to $2.2M ? - $3.4M less for roads, $4.1M less here, $7.9 M more there – before you know it we are $37M worse off.

That $37M has to come from somewhere. The article tells us the loan repayments being made by the council have gone up by 60%. Is that where the extra $37M comes from – increased loans ?

The Alliance is asking the NPDC to seriously consider reducing the projects already in the pipeline and make sure they have their budgeting and forecasting correct and under control.

They are already raiding the transport fund for day to day expenses, so they need to make sure they cut back on extra spending that is just not needed at this time.

Our planning team is doing a lot of work around how all these things are done and how it all adds up. This takes a lot of time for non council people to figure out, but we plan to cover more of how the NPDC are operating, so people have more understanding how decisions are made about spending our rates.

Click on the blue heading above to read the News Article.

Feel free to suggest to people you know they may like to visit our Website to read these articles.

This is another article in recent news which sets the usual tone of how the Council needs more money from you the ratepayer.

These articles don’t seem to make suggestions of how money could be saved elsewhere, the messages seem to prepare the ratepayer for higher rates.

When is the NPDC going to start seriously thinking about how they are going to reduce the overall cost of running the Council ? Continual budget blowouts and shortfalls are having a big impact on the amount being paid by New Plymouth ratepayers.

The article talks of the possibility of street lights falling on our heads or bridges failing. The spin of the Council bringing fear to everyone so you understand why your rates bill must increase.

We have to ask the question – street lights – are they not the everyday basic infrastructure that is included in your rates – the activity the Council should take care of first before spending any money on anything else ?

This article quotes:
“NZTA had indicated $113 M would be provided in funding for New Plymouth Roads, but the final budget is only $86M - $27M less than expected”.

Quoted in the article “A council officer's report said councillors would have to consider increasing its level of funding to meet the shortfall, maintain its funding and reprioritise what projects went ahead, or decrease funding and axe some jobs “

Could the Ratepayers Alliance suggest if only $86M was received in funding then the Council works out a new budget for roading that uses just the $86M received. Draw up a new plan for just the critical work that is needed to repair old infrastructure.

We would also ask why the Council is not suggesting some “nice to have” projects in the Long Term Plan be put on hold and money from those diverted into any shortfall for critical infrastructure ?

If the Council truly thinks street lights are going to start dropping out of the sky, and bridges are going to fail, then why are they not suggesting multiple projects in the Long Term Plan are suspended and that money be transferred to spend on critical infrastructure work ?

The ratepayers of New Plymouth are not a bottomless pit of money who can continually cover a Council with a wish list of costs that just keeps getting longer.

Really, does it have to be so complicated ?
And so expensive ?

A few weeks ago the NPDC Deputy Mayor wrote an opinion piece on how "The Government needs to help us save".
We found it an interesting opinion in the middle of a cost of living crisis for many households paying rates and rent in this region.
There seems to be two types of themes in this article.
Remove democratic rights for voters, so the community has less say, then it would be quicker and cheaper for the Council to get on and make things happen.
Redistribute Government Tax so the Council gets to spend it. The Government paying tax on Government owned land would be a new tax created for households to pay to the Government, which would then be paid to the Council.
More money for the Council but extra expense for ratepayers and renters.
There doesn't seem to be any mention of how everyday people would have less to pay in rates, rent or taxes by actually bringing down the cost of projects, or running the Council.
Don't know if anyone else reading this thought the same ?

After 6 weeks, we posted this about our 2 teams beavering away with great effort, getting us up and running and working out where we are heading.
A big milestone at this point as we had all signed off on one of the teams’ plans.
There is still a lot of leg work to do before you will start seeing more progress, but just letting you know a lot is still happening in the background.

We see a local lad picked up our article about the $1.2M steps and has done a few sums. What does everyone think ? Should we have a bit more transparency about how costs are worked out at the NPDC ?

Sam Bennett’s Views on the Fitzroy $1.2M Steps

In a recent Stratford Press article Sam Bennett explains why specifically at Fitzroy Beach, with the extremely steep access to the beach, accessibility access must be provided.

This is a Council project with an estimated price tag of only $1.2M which is not a big number in the overall scheme of Council spending, so you may think why would we run a second item about this on our Facebook page. Of course we would need to trust the $1.2M doesn’t turn into $3M or more.

The thing is when our Councillors tell us where they stand on the small issues, they are also telling us where they stand on the big issues. Two of those big issues in the last 2 weeks have ratepayers being subjected to a $27M shortfall and a $37 M loss. All the losses, no matter how big or how small, all add up, and decisions are being made about spending our rates, and borrowing money, in the same way as outlined in this story.

This is a story mostly about irony – Sam is championing for what he considers is a neglected group of the community – but his Council is making life extremely difficult for that same group of the community.

Sam is quoted in the article:

“I’m involved with a lot of groups such as Grey Power, Positive Ageing, Age Concern Taranaki, Enabling Good Lives, all organisations that represent people who may have accessibility issues, and in each group people are telling me they feel like they’re being treated like second-class citizens. They feel they are an afterthought.”

The Alliance would like to ask how in touch really is Sam with the members who belong to Grey Power, Positive Ageing and Age Concern. We are very aware of elderly people on a fixed income pension who are seriously considering having to sell their home because they can’t afford to pay their rates. For some pensioners they are heading toward their rates being 20% of the income they have for the entire year.

Where are these people going to live when they can no longer afford to live in their own home ?

Are you affected by your rates increase impacting on whether you can stay living in your home ? Do you have elderly parents or family affected by this issue ? Perhaps you would like to e-mail Sam Bennett and let him know if his way of thinking is not helpful for you or your family ? Sam’s e-mail address is:

sam.bennett@npdc.govt.nz

Sam Bennett also thinks it is important for the Council to keep creating big projects. Sam again quoted:

“When we go to build a new asset, we need to think about building that asset for the mainstream of the community, and the mainstream community is inclusive of everyone, irrespective of whether you’ve got a disability or an impairment with your age.”

The Ratepayers Alliance would like to ask, when the committee meets to talk about upgrading assets, do they just jump into what would be the most amazing option we could build there ? Or do they ask if there is a cost effective alternative to how to address the issue in front of them ?

A cost effective option which means pensioners on fixed incomes, who also have accessibility issues, are not being rated out of their homes with these expensive projects and large increases in rates.

Last week the Ratepayers Alliance suggested signs could be put in at Beach Street to divert people with accessibility issues to East End Beach in Strandon – a 500m diversion to flat, safe access to the walkway and beach.

Sam thought this was inconvenient:

Why should those people have to go 500 metres that way or that way when they can come there?”

How about another low cost alternative for Sam if gaining access at Strandon is not convenient.

How about the steep road down to Fitzroy Beach is turned into a shared space like outside the New Plymouth Library. The speed limit is set to just 5km an hour and everyone very slowly works their way up and down the hill in a shared space, with whatever mobility devices and cars they have. It’s worked at the library – there has been no injuries – so it’s not a health and safety issue ?

Is that a possible alternative option that won’t cost $1.2M and won’t push elderly people out of their homes because their rates are too high?

We’d also like to highlight a comment by Sam Bennett in the Stratford Press article:

“If we just replace the steps, who is that going to serve? Not everyone. It will serve the tyranny of the majority, and override the minority of people that have these accessibility issues, and that’s not fair.”

What does Sam Bennett mean by the “Tyranny of the Majority” ?

Would the majority be the people who pay the rates and the rents - (due to the rates putting rents up) ?

Are the ratepayers and renters of New Plymouth a Tyranny ? What on earth does Sam Bennett mean by this comment ? You may like to ask him – his e-mail address is listed above.

Sam is quoted again:

“I know that times are tough, but this project is going to go ahead early next year, and it will be it will be a game changer for our community.”

So does that mean the Tyranny of the Majority – the Ratepayers and Renters – have no say, this project is happening regardless of whether the elderly can afford to pay the increased rates due on their homes and it’s happening regardless of whether the majority of New Plymouth wants this expensive option ?

Where is the democracy in our Council processes with this asset upgrade and the way of thinking about the majority of people who live in New Plymouth ?

We’ve run two stories this week which highlight the need to think carefully about who people want to represent them when they are voting next time. The local government people representing us may not always be how they appear when they are campaigning.

Thanks to our friends over at the Tax Payers Union we’ve become aware of a plan for the NPDC to build a set of steps and a ramp at Fitzroy Beach for $1.2M.
The article tells us this was in the Long Term Plan. Did any of our supporters notice it there ?
Mayor Holdem is quoted as saying “safety with prams, bikes, wheelchairs and mobility scooters is an issue with a narrow 2 lane road” down to the carpark.
It is being suggested mums are taking their prams down the hill for the kids to use the pool – then they are pushing the pram back up the hill ? That’s an epic walk back up that hill when there is a great carpark right by the pool. We’re not sure how many parents are actually pushing prams up and down that hill.
We did a Roving Reporter trip out to the steps in question. Mobility access is very important but we had a simple idea of how mobility access could be promoted to a nice flat access to the walkway.
If you turn into Beach Road – with the offending steep steps at the end – halfway along Beach Road meets McLean Street.
How about on that intersection signage is put up to turn left for safe Mobility access to a lovely flat beach – East End Beach at Strandon.
Travel down McLean Street and where it meets Nobs Line, put in more signage to turn right - straight down to East End Beach. Nice and flat and so easy to access.
Fitzroy Beach is also accessible from Strandon along the nice flat walkway.
Is there a reason the NPDC needs to find a really expensive way of doing projects ? Do we believe this project would come in at $1.2M or will it blow out ?
And the NPDC seem to love combining a project in New Plymouth with Government money. They don’t seem to understand that is just using our tax money without asking us about that first either.
P.S Come back in a few days when we will have a story about how well the NPDC are doing at managing their budgets – it ties in really well with this article.