FNHL

Far North Holdings have received some well deserved criticism in recent weeks from a wide range of ratepayers, airport users, foreshore users and even a few pretend mayors.

For those who haven’t noticed, Far North Holdings is a council owned company that pleases itself at our expense while it engages in activities that ultimately supply a good standard of living to the Chief Executive and the one director from Auckland.

In theory it should be quite a good business acting in all of our interests but we have no say and no contact other than at the end of its food chain as ratepayers or users of various facilities that they have given themselves the right to charge us for.

Far North Holdings doesn’t hold an annual meeting to which we are invited to question the board and hear from them about next year’s plan in the way that a publicly owned company would. Questions usually result in some form of release from the Council’s spin doctor along the lines that there exists some form of secret agreement between FNHL and FNDC the details of which are too important for the likes of us to know about.

FNHL recently incurred the wrath of all users of Kerikeri Airport by not only implementing pay for use carparking before it is implemented in any of our busiest streets, but also doing it in a truly dumb manner.

Airport users are supposed to follow complicated directions from a machine that will issue a paid parking ticket for the period nominated. This assumes that passengers know when they are returning which they may well not, if off for a business or other trip and given that they are flying Air NZ the chances of arriving back even when you do expect to are low.

Vacuous statements from FNHL state that income will be used to pay for the carpark at the airport. What has actually resulted is that the airport carpark is now empty as a local person now offers a much cheaper and more convenient park and pick-up service which produces the same airport income that no charging would produce, NONE.

Given that ratepayers are levied to encourage tourism into the area it is bizarre that a council subsidiary should introduce carparking charges to reduce tourism.

And don’t get me onto FNHL charging mooring fees in addition to those already charged by Northland Regional Council who have managed moorings for years and installed them in the first place. Surely we could have an independent board of Northlanders monitoring FNHL so it does what we want!