On 4 June we posted a comment by Cr Cootes of Otaki made on Facebook justifying the increase in KCDC staff by new central government requirements of councils.
Cr Cootes criticised us for doing this, so we invited him to write an article in response.
He didn’t, so Salima Padamsey sent an OIA to the council:
“Does KCDC have the expertise in house to manage these new Central Government requirements?
“In addition, could you please provide the estimated cost of each requirement?”
Tenei ko te urupare a te Tumuaki o te Kaunihera.
Again you miss the point Waikanae Watch. I had no issue with you posting my comments, after all they are in the public domain. What I was critical of was you posting a paragraph or “snippet” of my comments out of a longer Facebook post denying your readers the benefit of the wider context in which they related to. As you can see from the official response I was right in that the Council is responsible for more work from Central Govt and that comes at an extra cost, both staff time and $$ that ratepayers have to pay for. You can now add to that cost the time for staff to respond to the OIA.
The rest of the original Facebook reply you mention did not relate to the subject of the post: “what does the central government require councils to do nowadays that it didn’t used to?”
If your council put a lot more documents on its website — as we and others have advocated — the need for OIA requests would be reduced as people could then find the information themselves.
I respectfully disagree… If you actually go back and read it the initial post referred to going “back to basics” or like the days of the Borough Council, sticking to core services etc. The comparison I made was that Councils nowadays have to do so much more than a Council back when they were Borough Councils. That is a fact. It’s like comparing apples to oranges in a way. I could add another 10 things to the list above but here’s just one… On several occasions we’ve had requests for us to remove Electra power poles to enable more accessibility on our paths for mobility scooters, pram/buggys and the like. Now I’m not saying that widening footpaths is a bad thing but it comes at a cost and wasn’t something a Council considered 50-80 years ago cause who had a mobility scooter back then?