The Decent Thing To Do

Irrelevant of Ludlow’s comments

“You would think when Tim saw me at 3.15pm this afternoon he’d have had the fortitude to tell me of his decision. THAT is disappointing.”

“It wouldn’t have been hard and it would have shown good leadership,” Cr Ludlow said.

The decent thing to do is to contact ALL other councillors before publicly releasing the report as part of the agenda.

“I walked out happy as Larry thinking `gosh, he is taking it so well, it’s fantastic he is not upset’. I assumed – I know what a hi-tech guy he is – that as soon as it went online he would be looking at it … I thought he would have known by 3.15.”

Tim shouldn’t have left it to the agenda to inform the councillors and his statement shows that is what he did.  “I thought he would have known“.  Tim should have told him.

Is an email to them the day before all that hard (even without a P.A.)?

Hi Guys

I know some of you will be disappointed but I have chosen Carolyn as my Deputy Mayor.  I hope you will support me in this decision. The report to be included with the agenda (to be released tomorrow) is attached.

Regards

Tim

The Long Term Plan Responses

Well if you made a submission on the Long Term Plan you can view the staff responses and recommendations that will go to the councillors at the 5 June meeting.  From page 67 (part 2) you can view the recommended decisions by topic along with submission summaries for each topic.  I find the responses more interesting as they are rife with staff comment.  I reiterate that ICC staff don’t lie (not my experience anyway) but I always note that it’s never the full answer or ambiguous at best.  The things they don’t answer always crack me up, I think it’s because they can’t or just don’t want to.

I must say well done to Alan Swallow for pointing out that the men’s shelter of Salvation Army receives nothing from ICC.  Now they have an extra $5,000.  Of course drainage for a sports field got $50,000.  I know what I consider far more important within the community.  At least they haven’t offered to foot the bill for the whole drainage project.

Thankfully they (we) will not be putting any money toward Rugby Park but the cynic in me thinks it will come about in the future, empires to build.

Urban Rejuvenation has now got a suggested $300,000 ($100k proposed) to split between all the relevant communities.  Another $140k per year for the following nine years.

Anyway from page 107 (part 3) are the responses, go through and see how they responded to your suggestions.  You can access it here.

 

Courting Bluff

The wooing of Bluff is becoming more and more evident or is Tim trying to justify Venture’s existence (BTW Tim I know a committee in Bluff that’s already working with media on articles free of charge!).   The 5 June Mayor’s Report contains an article about Bluff.  Wouldn’t a link have sufficed?

And why is southlandnz.com the contact?  What about Bluff Promotions?

Transparency….Yeah Right

No time for links, find it yourself on ICC’s website (Your Council, Current agendas).  We have that ‘oops, we forgot to properly declare the joint committee’s advisory group’ draft minutes in public excluded.  Not the usual reason from council this time though.

I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it is ICC carrying out the ‘commercial activity’ (silly me, I thought waste was a core service not a commercial activity).  I would hope the ‘advisory group’ are not carrying out the ‘commercial activity’ (the key word being advisory).

Bluff Board Screws Pool Of A Future

That’s what it looks like to me and exactly why I opposed the Board’s public excluded pool negotiations.  I believe there was another 500+ that agreed.

To recap, the original decision was that ICC funding ‘will be $180K’ and then after some public excluded Board involvement the new resolution was ‘up to $180k’ and that was based on operational expenditure.  I argued that the full $180k is necessary for the pool to have a viable future.  Any cost savings in operation could be placed into reserve.

End result only operational funding because ‘importance was placed on the submission of the Bluff Community Board’ (WTF), 2 versus 536.

We now have ICC managing the pool for the trust and look at the operational savings they’ve made (granted, the loan on the building is gone now).  From the Community Services agenda

ICC have done well out of this deal, pity the Bluff representatives screwed Bluff over.  That is why I bitch about them and rightly so!  If that is the true cost of running the pool, the Trust would be banking over $100,00 this year alone.

Thanks Bluff Community Board….you serve us soooooooo well..FFS

Dangerous Buildings

We see in the upcoming Regulatory meeting agenda (last page) that all the dangerous buildings listed are in Bluff.

It also seems  that ICC staff have been leaving in droves (well five – four in one department alone).  Are they leaving for better jobs, frustrated or just getting out of Dodge like the Deputy Mayor?

Interesting

From the Bluff Community Board agenda for 14 May (Monday)

232 GORE STREET, BLUFF − RAVENSDOWN BUILDING
A building consent has been received to demolish the building at 232 Gore Street.
Council has asked some questions over removal of foundations and how drains are to be
sealed, and also advised the applicant that a resource consent is also required.
The questions were asked on 20 April 2012 and as at 3 May 2012 no reply had been
received.

And that’s about all I have to say that.

Nice To Be Kept Informed

ICC have rung (because they know I’ll ring otherwise) to say that they are working on getting the agenda for the LTP verbal submission meeting online. I’ve been told that they have the ability but will only be uploading the report and a summary of the submissions to their website.  Eirwen mentioned it is over 900 pages and about 1/2 a gig.  They could put it online but it would be too big for the average joe or would be about 100 3Mb files.

It will be available in hard copy (oh those poor trees) and on disc (they’ve made one up for me:-)  Once I’ve got it in my hot little hands I’ll upload it.  Eirwen reckoned no one would want it but I think differently.  I know quite a few that peruse other submissions.

Oops, I(CC) Did It Again!

So it begins again, remuneration for elected members for 2012/2013.  According to reports from other councils the indicative pool recommendations sent out by the Remuneration Authority are due back by 7 May 2012.

Keep in mind that all councils and boards must make a resolution to accept the pool and any ‘dissent’ must be recorded.  Not a problem you would think…except that Bluff  had a meeting (2 April) and the next is not until 14 May…after the date it needs to be returned to the Remuneration Authority.  Deja vu, same balls up as last year!

I had this post in my drafts and was waiting to see if ICC included remuneration on the council agenda for 24 April but in light of the GDC media attention over remuneration I’m sure a councillor from ICC is chasing it up in time for the council meeting…still too late for Bluff though.

 

I Am Impressed

The Community Services agenda has been online since Tuesday (April 3) for the meeting on April 11.  Impressive guys, nice to see you’re not taking the ’2 days prior to the meeting’ literally.  Making it available even earlier allows residents to do their research, make plans to attend if they want and ask to speak in the Public Forum without getting exemptions from the Chair and CEO.  Good on you!

Community Services does not impress me in any way though.  The only thing I found of interest was the recommended resolution to ILT and ILT Foundation.  It perplexes me on a few levels…Can a committee of council apply for funding and do funders give to councils directly?  I thought this is why ICC has charitable trusts set up.  I also thought resolutions funders required must have the amount of the funding request?  I also consider the ILT as the trading division and the ILT Foundation as the appropriate group that gives out funding but the recommendation has ILT and ILT Foundation listed?

So are ILT  Foundation giving pokie money out and ILT giving out Trust profits from the monopoly they have?  Can someone clarify because this keeps coming up and then I look it up and for some reason it’s not ‘sticking’ and I question myself over it.