TCDC: Cut the Bureaucracy, Not the Services
Ratepayers are once again being asked to dig deeper. TCDC’s executive proposed an average 14%+ rates increase. Councillors trimmed it to 3.77%. Both figures are unacceptable – and both entirely dodge the real problem.
Nobody is talking about TCDC’s burgeoning bureaucracy.
Housed in Thames, TCDC now employs an estimated 255 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff at a cost approximately $28 million per year. That is ratepayers’ money. Yet in all the consultation documents, all the carefully worded proposals, there is not a single mention of reducing staff numbers. Not one.
Instead, we are offered four choices: mow the grass less, cut transfer station hours, pay more fees, or lose rates remissions. That is the sum total of TCDC’s vision for fiscal discipline – make ratepayers pay more or receive less, while the organisation itself remains untouched.
Look at the legal function alone. TCDC employs an army of lawyers in-hous, – and still spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on external legal opinions. Why? If the in-house team cannot do the job, why are ratepayers funding them?
Then there is communications. A heavily staffed department producing material that, with standardised templates and modern AI tools, could be handled by one person. Councils far larger than TCDC are already doing exactly this.
And the consultation process itself? Whangamatā residents were notified of a community meeting – Thursday 10 April, 10am to 1pm – by a notice published Wednesday, 8 April; working day’s notice. That is not community engagement. That is window dressing.
The numbers make this even harder to swallow. According to TCDC’s own figures, the Whangamatā ward alone contributes $23.9 million – 22.3% of the district’s total 2024/25 rate take of $107.3 million. That figure is projected to climb to $117.5 million in 2025/26 and $122 million by 2026/27, before accounting for the proposed shift from Land Value to Capital Value rating. More broadly, the eastern Coromandel – from Whangapoua to Whangamatā – contributes some 75% of all district rates. Communities paying the lion’s share of the bill deserve far better than this.
TCDC exists to serve ratepayers, not the other way around. Before a single dollar is added to rates, or a single service is cut, this council owes its community a full, honest accounting of its staffing levels, its management structure, and whether 255 fulltime employees are remotely justified for a district of this size.
Submissions are open until 28 April. I urge every ratepayer to have their say – and to demand the question TCDC refuses to ask itself.
Patrick Kerr, Whangamatā
Reducing fuel costs
I noticed the Govt was making suggestions on how to reduce fuel costs. One was “reduce speed”.
I tried this on a trip to Waikato Hospital and another trip to Auckland. Totally unscientific. But the results were astounding. The vehicle is a Nissan Navara Ute diesel. Diesel Fuel price has just jumped from 180.9 to 364.9 a litre.
To Hamilton and back to Whiti: Two POB. Cruise control set to 85 Kph on both trips.
Whiti/Hamilton/Whiti gave me 6.7L/100Km. I do this trip often and normally in would be 7.6 to 7.8. L/100Km. So that is a saving of between 11.8% and 14.1%. Pretty good.
Whiti to Auckland: Because of traffic I only kept a record till we hit a standstill around Greenlane. At that point the recording was 6.1L/100Km. Normally at that point I would be at 7.5L/100Km. So that was a saving of 18.7%.
On the return trip from Auckland I was towing a heavily loaded trailer plus a pile in the back of the ute. For the whole trip including dreadful Auckland traffic, it was 7.6L/100Km.
Two years ago, I wrote to the AA, the Govt ministers and to NZTA suggesting a nationwide speed limit of 90 kohl to reduce pollution, reduce fuel usage, and reduce road accidents. Silence. My suggestion sank like a lead balloon.
Pete Bould, Whitianga
Rearranging the Deckchairs
The TCDC is going to great lengths to consult on the up and coming increase to rates.
I have no problem with consultation. Consultation is great and important.
But, as with the proposed Whitianga Esplanade project, we are just given a set of options. For the Esplanade Project ($12 to $18M) “Do Nothing” would have been my preferred option, but it wasn’t an option.
For the rates consultation, again are given set options, and once again, my preferred option is not an option. I would have supported real reductions in costs. Fund the basics, get rid of the nice to haves, work on efficiencies and productivity, lower the head count.
The set options we are given do nothing to lower costs. They just redistribute costs. For instance, everyone’s water charges are going up 40%, rubbish tags up by 12.7%, rubbish to the transfer station up 13.1%, dog registration up 15.8%, boat ramp combined annual fee up 25% and on it goes.
Yes, our rates bill will look less frightening, but the costs don’t change. They just come from different angles. This consultation is only about rearranging the deckchairs.
Ed Arron, Whitianga
Contrary to Mr Tegg
Wonderful to hear that correspondent Denis Tegg (Informer, 7 April) is now a geology expert and can educate us all on NZ’s gas fields.
Contrary to his newfound geological expertise, New Zealand does indeed have very considerable potential for new gas discoveries. Unfortunately, this process is expensive and will require substantial overseas investment. Thanks to Jacinda’s ban on offshore exploration it is unlikely any overseas investors will ever again invest in NZ hydrocarbon exploration, and who can blame them.
We could probably also significantly extend our current reserves by doing the same remarkable fracking trick that the USA did which turned them from a net gas importer to a global exporter in only a few years. However, I can’t see the anti-petroleum lobby ever allowing that to happen here as they continue to agonise over non-existent global warming fears.
Mr. Tegg is quite correct when he states that hydro dams can be used to provide some backup to his unreliable and intermittent electricity from solar panels and windmills.
Unfortunately since the Muldoon era our population has rapidly increased and electricity demand skyrocketed with his Teslas, Chinese EVs and AI all set to become significant parts of that demand. Rather than sensibly becoming a nation of dam builders, we have become a nation that prefers to build sports stadiums and cycle ways as the environmental lobby opposes new dams at every step.
Mr. Tegg is also wrong when he says that I “mock electric sea gliders”. On the contrary, I would love to be able to travel to Auckland in 30 minutes for only $30 which he promised us all would happen by 2025. It is his misty-eyed faith in unrealistic dreams that I mock. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to live in the real world, not his great green utopia.
Mr. Tegg suggests readers use ChatGPT, his preferred AI, to check his claims. Could this be the same ChatGPT that recently told me with great confidence that Moa stones come from kiwi?
Alastair Brickell, Kuaotunu
Muddy economics
I felt shame as I looked out at our Mercury Bay ocean backdrop after the recent rain event (I am not referring to Cyclone Vaianu). The colour is muddy brown almost to the horizon. Are people’s actions degrading our environment?
When I owned a lifestyle block containing a stream, it was often syrupy brown after rain.
I changed this to clear water run-off through several actions while earning a salary elsewhere.
These actions were: trapping rats and possums, shooting feral pigs and goats, and stocking a small number of sheep on the bush-dotted pasture. Also I planted many trees in the headwaters bush. There was no venison to be had.
Previously, a neighbour had rented the block for grazing but had used it as a ‘sacrifice paddock’ to protect his farm from the effects of over-stocking. I assume he was having to pay back a bank loan.
Is the loss of farm soil the result of poor husbandry or badly practised economics – environment or profit?
Before humankind came on the scene, was our ocean receiving clear run-off?
Peter H Wood, Whitianga
More reminders that poison is not the way
Peter Wood (Informer March 31) reminds us how the animal poisoners would dismiss any kind of alternative method of wild animal control as non-viable.
Now George Campbell has come along with his self-resetting traps and demonstrated a more efficient, effective and very viable way of controlling “pests” in remote country.
The resounding benefit of these traps is the ability to target “pests” alone without harming any of the non-target creatures which inevitably get poisoned.
It was good to hear how successful George’s traps have been for the Purangi Conservation Trust (Informer March 31).
Enviro-groups have, in the past, accepted government funding with the proviso that the possums will be poisoned, usually by workers carrying bags of poison baits into the forest and filling bait stations. Today, with George’s traps being funded by government, we are seeing enviro-groups turning, one by one, from poison to traps. One of the great benefits of kill-traps is the absence of the IN-humane cruelty we witnessed in all the deaths by poison. More about the cruelty of poisons next time.
John Veysey, Thames Coast
20,000 hessian sandbags were provided by TCDC across the district for Cyclone Vaianu.
Thank you to the people that filled sandbags for others.
