A total of 52,880 compared to 30,359 which shows that we are getting noticed. As in previous years, 12% of views came from other countries.

The two most viewed individual posts were those on the new Kapiti Estate Subdivison and the KCDC’s nastiness towards its critics, Kerry Bolton in particular.

We try to have at least 50% of posts specific to Waikanae, with a mix of district, national and international topics for the rest, which are needed for interest as despite all the new subdivisons, Waikanae is still quiet and relaxed. That’s in fact the way we like it and we figure most people do.

(Spelled whiskey if you’re Irish or American.) This event entitled Whisky Tasting with a Burns Night Dinner Hosted by International Chef and Raconteur Chris Evans is part of the Kapiti Summer School and takes place on 19 January from 7 p.m. At present it is listed as “class full” but you can be added to a waiting list in case of cancellations — details here

We called in to see Chris a couple of days ago — he said his venue is steadily picking up, but he still drives buses on the Coast to supplement his income. He is pretty critical of KCDC bureaucracy and charges which instead of helping business start-ups, hinders them. This confirms what the local Chamber of Commerce has had to say about it: so much for the millions of dollars the KCDC has spent on “economic development.” He told Mayor Guru his frustrations during a visit by the latter, who didn’t want to know.

We popped into Mahara Place this morning to check out the ‘pop-up mini library’ and at the same time this vibrant display of flowers in the two planters in the Mahara Lane part. Full points to the council gardener!

On the subject of the mini-library, this is in the exterior alcove where the artificial vegetation tableau is, and has about 300 of what they say are the most popular books in a portable bookcase for borrowing, They can also do reserves.

For the medium term they are looking at alternative premises; the trio of permanently empty shops owned by the Hong Kong lady were looked at, but she wont allow anything to be attached to the walls, and earthquake safety rules require bookshelves to be secure, so it’s not suitable.

“Cyathea dealbata, commonly known as the silver fern or as ponga or punga (Māori kaponga or ponga) is a species of medium-sized tree fern, endemic to New Zealand ” Full article (Wallace Trickett pic)

Below is an article in the Harvard Business Review which asks the equivalent question in respect of a board of a company, but in NZ local councils are legally described in Section 12 of the Local Government Act as corporations (“a local authority is a body corporate”).

The practical difference is that council boards are elected by stakeholders (the residents) rather than by shareholders, and on the basis of one vote per person rather than one vote per share: but the principle is much the same.

The major difference in purpose is that a council is a branch of government and operates on public, not private money; it does not need to keep its stakeholders satisfied to legally demand money from them in the way that a business has to keep customers satisfied to keep them from going elsewhere.

Section 10 (1) of the Local Government Act:

The purpose of local government is—

(a) to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities; and

(b) to meet the current and future needs of communities for good-quality local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions in a way that is most cost-effective for households and businesses.

Does the KCDC do this? Yes, but poorly and certainly not in a “cost-effective” manner as we’ve seen.

What “strategy” is required for a council? This is set out in sections 93-97 of the LGA: a council needs to have both a long term plan and an annual plan, basically what is needed do the things expected as per 10 (1) in the immediate future and several years hence. That’s not rocket science in the case of a council: essentially: A. What must the district have; B. What would it be non-essential, but nice for the district to have. In the latter category decisions need to be made based on cost.

There is also expectation in the LGA of public consultation (“effective public participation in decision-making processes”) in formulation of the plans, but as we’ve seen in the KCDC’s case, such consultation is a sham.

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by Roger L. Martin

A friend who serves on a number of consequential public company boards came to my office not long ago to ask my opinion on something that had become a contentious issue across his boards. The question: What is the proper role of a board with respect to company strategy?

On some of my friend’s boards, the prevailing view is that strategy is their job and they insist on having board strategy retreats during which they set strategy. On other of his boards, the prevailing view is the extreme opposite: their job is to wait for management to come forward with its strategy and to either approve it or not. The others lay at varying points in between. He wished for some clarity and consistency.

The answer is easy at the end of the spectrum at which the board claims it should do strategy. If the board feels it needs to do strategy for the company, it is prima facie evidence that it should fire the Chief Executive. If a board that meets just a few days a year can do a better job of setting strategy than the CE who is in the business 24/7, then the board has the wrong CE. That fact is even clearer if the CE accepts that it’s the board’s role to do strategy. That means the board and the CE are in full agreement that the CE is actually the Chief Operating Officer. Any self-respecting and competent CE would understand and resign before being fired because a real CE is in charge of strategy – or is not actually the chief executive.

What about the other extreme where the board simply declares “yea” or “nay” to the CE’s strategy? That is less bad, but renders the board largely useless in strategy. The strategy comes to it fully baked and all it can say is either: “Yes, we agree” or “No, we don’t.” The latter is, plainly and simply, a no-confidence vote and leads directly to the same place as above: the board should fire the CE, if the CE doesn’t resign first. In the former case, the board has not added a whit of value to the development of the strategy – so it is largely useless on the most important matter in the entire company.

Instead of these extremes, the right approach is an iterative process in which the CE is in charge, because it is the CE’s job to formulate strategy, but the CE wisely gets the maximum amount of advice from the board – assuming that the board has useful insights. If it doesn’t, its members should be fired or choose to resign.

Practically, this iterative process can be done in three simple steps.

First, at the start of the process, the CE should seek the board’s input on the challenges that the board thinks the strategy should address. Most disconnects that I have witnessed developing between boards and CE’s are the product of the CE’s strategy attempting to address problems other than the ones that board thinks are most critical. To avoid this, just have a conversation about them at the start. Directors may feel the strategy needs to address the emergence of new competitors, the slowing of growth, technology disruption, or an increasingly bloated cost structure. Whatever the specifics are, the CE has the opportunity to both gain important insights from and align with the board. And even if there is not total agreement, the CE can incorporate the board’s areas of concern from the very beginning of the process.

Second, in the middle of the process, the CE should come back to the board with strategy possibilities – alternative approaches to deal with the challenges laid out in the first step. Note, the CE isn’t asking for ratification of a particular approach, but rather seeking advice and feedback on the potential solutions – which resonate more, what concerns remain outstanding, how possibilities could be modified, etc. Done right, this step can provide exceedingly helpful input to the process of coming to a strategy recommendation to the board.

The third and final step entails the CE presenting the desired strategy choice to the board. Clearly, this has echoes of the one extreme end laid out above: coming to the board with a fully baked strategy. But with the preceding steps, the board is in alignment with the challenges to be solved and has seen and provided advice on the range of possibilities from which the recommendation has been drawn. It can more easily make a great decision: either the CE has taken the advice and come back with a better strategy still, or the CE has failed to take the advice and come up with something uncompelling.

In the former case, the board can happily and intelligently affirm a strategy that it intimately understands and to which it has meaningfully contributed. In the latter case, it knows without question that it needs a new CE.

A CE clearly in charge with a board helping to provide sage advice is the perfect combination for boards and strategy.

by Guy Burns

It’s that time of year most Kiwis love—heat, holidays and happy days; we hope. Another year ends and a new one dawns. How have we fared in terms of local government in Kapiti—happy days or not?

Compared to past Councils, the current mix of Mayor and Councillors are a better team, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. In terms of overall performance, Kapiti Coast District Council scores 4.5 out of 10; improvement is urgently required.

FINANCIALLY—6 out of 10

Elected representatives have virtually halted the previous pattern of big ticket, high cost schemes. Finance is more tightly controlled—staff are finding it harder to introduce new, think-big schemes. A green-line limit tightly controls spending; which needed to happen with Kapiti sitting around the fourth highest indebted Council per capita in NZ.

On the negative side, elected representatives created the so-called Resilience Fund and Kapiti Growth Fund. These two schemes will borrow millions of dollars to invest into ‘growth’ funds. Using loans to make risky financial investments is well outside of the scope of core services that ratepayers expect. Even the Auditor-General, Greg Schollum calls the loans-for-investment plan ‘unusual’.

We hope it is not too late to scrap these two ill-thought-out arrangements. Far too much money is spent on consultants. The cost for these is millions every year and rising [excessive numbers of council bureaucrats also waste many millions a year —Eds]. Kapiti Coast District Council needs to get back to core services and make minimum use of outside consultants.

OPENNESS, TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY—4 out of 10

An open, transparent and accountable style of government was the election mantra of a local guru—Mayor Gurunathan. Has Kapiti Coast District Council delivered these promised goods?

No; our Council scores very badly in the key area of improved local democracy.

Elected members, including myself, have been told to leave some Council briefings. Public-excluded sessions still play a big part of KCDC meetings. The Council website is virtually unsearchable and easy Internet access to Council documents is virtually impossible.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT—2 out of 10

Councils around NZ think it’s their role to foster economic development and Kapiti Coast District Council is no exception. This year Council introduced a commercial targeted rate in the guise of economic development.

Hitting business with increased costs results in economic development? The opposite should occur: reduced costs, minimal regulations and less bureaucracy.

KCDC should stick to providing basic services. Leave economic development to businesses; Council does not have the skills and expertise for such activity and millions of dollars of ratepayers money have been squandered. For example: the scandalous Clean Tech Trust loan which disposed of more than $2 million of ratepayers’ money.

CORE SERVICES—7 out of 10

Overall, Kapiti Coast District Council scores well in the provision of core-services. Kapiti Coast District Council’s front counter works well and scores highly with most ratepayers. Dig a little deeper and ratepayers are well served.

There have been a few glitches with roading, but district wide roads are well maintained and work well. Kapiti Road is chocka-block and best avoided during peak times. Rubbish collection is a bone of contention for some people, but the system is cost effective and accepted by most. Water quality is high and water-meters have become the norm, playing a key part in keeping water consumption down [that is highly disputed — Eds]. Our sewerage system functions satisfactorily.

Kapiti’s drainage system has not kept up with population growth and will struggle in a huge storm event. The spending of huge amounts of money will not solve the problem as our community lives on large areas of former swampland, too close to the sea and rivers, and many live only a few metres above sea level.

CONCLUSION—KCDC scores 4.5 out of 10

The sun is now moving back north—make the most of its heat while it lasts.

Here in Kapiti, KCDC needs to lift its game, especially in terms of: openness and transparency; economic development; and its huge debt. It’s in the first two areas that elected representatives have failed to deliver.

But don’t worry; just as the sun comes and goes, so do elected representatives and people will have a chance to vote in a new team towards the end of 2019.

“New research proves that while brain ageing is inevitable, brain decline is not. Research made on octogenarians who are “superagers” give exciting new evidence to how we perceive geriatric care and mental health.

“It has become standard knowledge that old people forget things. The elderly are ascribed to pity and ill-concealed contempt. Almost gratuitously, we forgive these mental lapses because “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” However, a new group of older adults are challenging these assumptions. Case in point: Donald Tenbrunsel is an 89-year old with the cognitive age of a 25-year-old. Not only is Tenbrunsel a decade older than the average male life expectancy, but his brain is also as sharp as a millennial’s. He is part of a new group of “super-agers” who assert that “typical” signs of ageing — such as being forgetful or not being able to learn new things — may not be as typical as initially believed.

“In a groundbreaking study, scientists have physiological proof on how the brains of these super-agers differ from the average elderly person. The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, determined that the brains of these octogenarians deteriorated at a much slower rate compared to their peers. The study’s author, Emily Rogalski of Northwestern University says, ‘when you think about normal aging, memory performance starts to decline in our late 20s and 30s. But when you look at individual data points, there’s a lot of variability in decline in our later years. There are people who seem to avoid this decline in memory performance.’”

Full article

Taken last Thursday about 9:20 pm.