HISTORIC PROGRESS

Last Wednesday, the 25th of October at 430pm an historic meeting took place at The Centre, that big opera house thing next to Master Plumbers in Kerikeri.

Gathered in the large meeting room (looking out over what appears to be a recreation of the prisoner’s exercise yard at Robben Island used by Nelson Mandela for all those years,) senior council staff finally sat down with the leading engineers, surveyors, developers and town planners of our region.

Clive Manley, the FNDC CEO and a team of most of his senior managers with the exception of the never-present roading engineer met with leading practitioners to discuss the controversial topic of Development Contributions, which are set to exceed rates as the main form of council income in years to come.

Fearing some sort of unrest FNDC brought a meeting conciliator who outlined what his response to any emotional outbursts would be. So what happened?

Well, exactly what usually happens when grown up business people meet! A sensible meeting took place that involved council outlining their Development Contribution Policy and practitioners asking questions about how it affected their clients and outlining some areas where the policies could be better explained or varied to meet unexpected outcomes.

Quite a few of the engineers, town planners and surveyors present, (including myself) have actually been plying our trades here for much longer than any of the council staff and we found it so useful to actually discuss such issues face to face with council, that all present agreed to hold these meetings at least quarterly and to discuss other issues.

With regard to Development Contributions, which add around $20,000 to the cost of any new house, FNDC were encouraged to publicise this information and directly inform the Real Estate industry so buyers of land and houses will know what’s in-store. For new topics, the subjects of Building Permits, the time taken and why every house also seems to need an excavation permit was suggested along with Engineering Standards.

Then the meeting had a Eureka moment, when council staff discovered that most practitioners are not that interested in formulating policy but are very interested in the implications of any new policy, as these always change behaviours and have different outcomes to those expected. The radical idea of trialling new policies for a test period of 3 to 6 months to see what happens and then adjust the policy settings was floated.

There is hope!