Statement from Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau
Today I met with Councillors to further discuss our Long-Term Plan amendment in the lead up to official deliberations on 21 November. I remain committed to working effectively and constructively with Councillors to find a solution to our insurance risk following the decision to not sell our airport shares. That includes looking at increasing our debt headroom, so we are better placed to respond to a disaster. Ahead of deliberations on 21 November, I have requested officers review and provide advice on options to reduce, defer or remove the following capex projects and programs.
• Te Ngakau/Civic Square updates, focusing only on the work that Council has a statutory obligation to do
• Begonia House upgrade
• Bond Store upgrade
• Te Awe Mapara – and what the impacts would be of reducing some of this unallocated funding
• Khandallah Swimming Pool
• Huetepara Park
• Grenada North Community Sports Hub – with the possibility of doing smaller improvements now and deferring major improvements to outer years
• Kilbirnie Skate Park
• Frank Kitts carpark demolition and landscaping for the Fale Male and Chinese Garden
• Otari Landscape Plan
• Suburban Centre upgrades
• Zoo Masterplan
• City Streets transport funding – prioritising a low cost second spine bus route, cross city cycle connection and Cuba and Dixon St improvements.
• Cycleways – recognizing the loss of government co-funding, whether we can prioritise completion of the primary network and get options for re-phasing the secondary routes.
As always, Scoop has bet me to it, with some great discussion going on over there, like this comment from “Claire” saying:
“The only higher-cost item she has listed is cycleways. The rest are community projects except for the second bus spine. Cutting rats and mice spending is not sensible.
1/Cycleways, 2/waste project, 3/Golden Mile – cut these higher value items.”
or this comment from a very grumpy “Paul” where he bluntly says:
“Apart from the obvious things on her list, why doesn’t the Mayor look inwards at the number of Council staff. For example the huge number in the communications team, who I bet are not on low salaries.”
Ouch. There is also an extremely grumpy old man from the South Island, “Mainlander” who spits out comments like this one:
“We have it from the mayor’s own mouth again that the WCC have no intention of correcting their ruinous mismanagement of the city. The WCC have traditionally responded to pleas for financial sanity with spiteful threats to community projects and core services and so it is here. Whanau and her supporters in the council and the back office plan to make noises like this until the government forgets the whole thing and they can get back to treating the city as an ATM. The WCC have been given an undeserved second chance and made it clear that they intend to squander it – why wait any longer? What is an Observer going to do except report what is plain to us all? Write to the minister of local government asking that a commissioner be appointed – that is what I will be doing and anybody who wants to continue living in this city should do likewise.”
I completely disagree with this old wanker, bleating on and on about the need to appoint a Commissioner to run the Council. Currently we have a democratically elected Council. It may not be perfect, but it is representative of our city. It is not a right wing council, but it is an uncomfortable and exciting mix of green and red and blue, and most of all it is OURS. Asking this currently rather right wing Government to appoint someone to take away the democratically elected Council and replace them with a (undoubtedly right-wing) likely semi-fascist mini dictator, for an unspecified length of time, is in my opinion a gross waste of democracy. I’m watching what happens in the USA with horror – the potential return of the fascist dictator there with a mentally unstable, infantile, genocidal, racist, sexist, self-centred narcissistic pathological liar at the head… No, Mr Mainlander, we don’t know who the Gov would put in as a Commissioner, and so the answer is a firm NO from me.
One person on the list in Lindsay’s Scoop is “Frustrated Ratepayer” who usefully makes a list of other possible savings:
“Tory, you forgot some things…..
Cut your opex – $1.5 billion in savings over the LTP.
Stop spending on social housing – $900 million saved;
Stop the Golden Mile makeover – $150million saved;
Close the Zoo and prioritise focus on Zealandia – $100 million saved;
Stop any new cycleways – $150 million saved;
Bin the organic waste plan – $60 million saved;
Stop your climate change initiatives, they’re duplicating EECA – $61 million saved.
There. Job almost done. You’re welcome.”
What do you think? Any more suggestions?
The Mayor is “Nickel and Diming” this because as mayor she need big projects to hang her campaign on ,
local councillors can say I got “X” Skate park , or swimming pool built in their areas, – But these don’t have city wide cut through and direct impact on all voters,
The Fact she doesn’t know, ( or want to tell us) how much money this will save is the major worry,
We’re trying to balance a budget, but we don’t seem to be prepared to out up how much things cost,
[ I suspect this is because she’s worried councillors will target he major projects to save the most money, to allow them to keep their smaller spending local projects]
They will all have their eye on the 2025 election that is less than a year away …
For my book balancing, I would simply cancel all work on the roads, as that just seems the most profligate waste of money I have seen. That would also ensure the probable collapse of Roading companies, who rely on these massive contracts, and then they all do a shit job anyway. Not completely sure how big a sum this is, but I’ve heard it is about 30% of the entire budget. Kerb renewals, tarmac replacement, digging up previously laid patches that went wrong – all of it is unnecessary until we have relaid every single bloody drain pipe in the capital. That’s probably at least ten years of savings right there. Billions and billions saved.
And if you’re wondering what happens in the mean time if a pothole develops, then we have Simeon’s half a billion silly pothole fund which can deal with these.