by Glen Crowther
Photo: The redacted Tauranga city celebration event leaflet released by TCC in response to an Official Information request (left) & leaflet supplied to BOP Times by an attendee (right).
Everyone will have their own reflections on the legacy left behind by Tauranga’s Commissioners. Here are some of mine…
‘Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story’ … or so the saying goes. I thought of that this morning as I read the latest headline article in the Bay of Plenty Times, entitled “Reviving a city’s heart: Tauranga’s commissioners on their big wins”.
I read through this PR piece to the end, where it listed 16 “projects progressed by the commission”, which were presumably aiming to justify Commissioner Anne Tolley’s claim that they were “Trying to stretch the budget to backfill a couple of decades of underinvestment,” “Particularly around maintenance of roading and, community infrastructure, and then try and get ahead of that growth.”
Yet when you look closely, nothing could be further from the truth.
Firstly, there was no “couple of decades of underinvestment” in many areas of council, including all-important water and wastewater upgrades. There is some truth to her claim, but not as a blanket statement rolled out to justify a huge spend-up on non-essential projects and unsustainable debt levels.
Secondly, re “maintenance of roading”, that has always happened. As an AA BOP Councillor, I’d suggest that there have never been as many local people concerned about road maintenance as there were last year, under the Commissioners’ governance.
If, instead of “maintenance of roading”, she’d meant to say “transport”, which has consistently ranked as the number one issue that Tauranga locals have wanted TCC to progress, that has also been a failure. At a stretch, this list includes 2 shared paths, a boardwalk, 1 cycleway (already started under councillors), a school crossing, and the last stages of the Maunganui Rd upgrade (also begun under the councillors). Hardly a list of the city’s priority projects.
That leaves Cameron Rd Stage 1, also started under councillors. The Commissioners oversaw the project while its timeframe nearly doubled and its cost nearly tripled, and several local businesses move or shut down as a result. All for the sake of a lowly-ranked project in TCC’s Transport Plan that NZTA, BOP Regional Council, and most local people all didn’t see as a priority.
As for the Commissioner’s claim that they’d “get ahead of that growth”, where is the evidence that anything has progressed faster than under an elected council? On the other hand, there is a good argument that things have gone much slower than expected on that front.
What’s more, the Commissioners scrapped our 2022 election, limited public forum slots, reduced submission times to 5 minutes per person and per organisation, held untold confidential meetings, and repeatedly blocked or tried to charge for LOGOIMA (Official Information Act) requests. They also scrapped the SmartGrowth Forums, which that were the public’s only way to provide regular input into the city’s growth plans, and replaced them with representatives from Priority One – a membership organisation that comprises Tauranga’s biggest corporates.
Which brings us back to how we view the Commissioners’ time in charge.
If you think the Te Manawataki o Te Papa civic centre project and Tauranga CBD waterfront redevelopment were the top priorities for the city, you probably think the Commissioners did okay. If you like the idea of city planning being led by developers and big business, ditto.
On the other hand, if you are concerned about the massively increased debt and forthcoming big rates increases, and think key transport projects and essential infrastructure are higher priorities than CBD projects, you probably have a different view.
And if you listen to what most local people say (in polls, surveys and submissions), you’ll understand that the Commissioners have not delivered what most Tauranga people want. They’ve talked a big talk, but didn’t ‘walk the walk’.
The Commissioners actions, including the Long Term Plan (LTP) they left behind, will result in:
- Debt tripling to $3 billion, the highest per capita of any NZ city
- Total rates take increasing to 2.64 x current rates
- Residential rates on average increasing to at least 2.2 x current residential rates
- Huge uncertainty around Tauranga’s water and wastewater infrastructure, with no public consultation on this at all
- Likely cost blowouts for key projects, including the civic centre
- No plan for land developers to pay more towards growth infrastructure – and the LTP will actually result in significantly lower developer funding of growth than under previous councils
- A complete failure to address Tauranga’s number one issue: transport
- Transport funding slashed by one-quarter from the Draft Plan, after it had already been severely cut back in earlier drafts, in order to pay for the civic centre and other CBD projects
- Tauranga’s number one and two transport projects axed from the LTP
- No plan to intensify the CBD and provide affordable dwellings, other than hoping that will happen as a result of TCC rebuilding a library and builds a museum-exhibition centre
- Massive increase in operating expenditure, with lots more to come…
- Complete failure to address the lack of public confidence in TCC, with the Commissioners ranked second worst council (behind Tenby Powell’s council at its lowest) in TCC’s own Residents Survey
What’s most concerning to me is that the Commissioners didn’t address the single biggest issue facing Tauranga: How to pay for the infrastructure needed to cater for all the planned growth? Some of that growth being (in Anne Tolley’s words) over the next “20 to 30 years, another 25,000-odd homes up that Western Corridor”.
Interestingly, other than occasional acknowledgement of some of those facts, local and nationwide media have primarily reported the spin from the Commissioners and TCC. Such as Commissioner Tolley’s oft-repeated comment that she was “dismayed at what she found” saying “I couldn’t believe my eyes at how bad the city centre looked – how dirty, decrepit, and deserted.”
Really? I lived here and worked in the CBD and did not notice the dirt, but I have definitely noticed the huge number of businesses that have permanently shut down in the CBD since the Commissioners arrived. To the extent that you can no longer even post a letter or package in our main business district.
The big story here is the old story: if you have power and money, you can tell history the way you want it told. And the celebratory ‘cocktail party’ for the Commissioners last month was the perfect ending in that regards: the Commissioners in a room with Tauranga’s wealthiest developers and leading business-people, with the most prominent developer acting as MC. And local people not even allowed to know who attended.
That said, if you want to know who is pushing the narrative that growth and CBD projects are the priority, just look at the leaflet obtained by the Bay Times “listing the council, Carrus, Priority One, L.T McGuiness, Willis Bond, Watts & Hughes Construction, Quayside, TwentyTwo, Panorama Towers, Urban Task Force, Tauranga Business Chamber” (see BOP Times photo above).
And then ponder who on that list will directly benefit from lots more growth and ratepayer spending in the CBD!
Whoever is elected in this 2024 council election, one thing is very clear. We need a change in Tauranga’s culture, so we can move from an unsustainable developer-led growth model, to a sustainable city plan that puts the needs of local people ahead of the desires of vested interests.