Local impacts of international trends

A couple of weeks back I suggested in my Sunday Star Times business article that Reserve Bank governor Bollard should think about reducing our interest rates to match Australian rates so that offshore investors in our currency would have an alternative option to the NZ$ to earn the same returns, thus easing pressure on our dollar. Two days later Radio NZ lead its news with an item that economic forecasters BERL were suggesting exactly the same thing.

Nice to know that we can lead economic thinking from up here, and we will need to as we face the challenges of funding the much needed catch up in our infrastructure so the Far North can offer similar standards of roading and sewerage to the rest of NZ.

By the time you read this Bollard will have made his moves on interest rates and we will have to get on. Fonterra are indicating boosted payments to dairy farmers which will have benefits to rural economies, although a fair bit of the payout will no doubt go in debt reduction. Prudent financial management is at the core of any improvement to local services and this will be a real focus at FNDC in the next few years.

Councils have enjoyed the bumper times associated with rate growth from not only the steady increases in percentage costs of fees and rates but also the spin off from the large rises in land values on which these rates are based. This steady income growth coupled with dramatic rises in development charges has lifted financial pressure from council expenditure and allowed the rocketing bureaucracy to occur.

This waste needs to end and there needs to be serious investigation of the costs of doing everything both within council and more importantly on citizens suffering delays and expense as a result of the ponderous ways things get done up here.

Councillor Byers has kindly looked into why it has taken so long for a permit to be granted for some simple buildings in Ahipara. Staff have assured him that it is the applicant’s fault. (It always is!). Long lists of additional information are always produced just before the time limit to reply to the applicant. On inspection most of these are rubbish and typically include requests for information that they already have (in this case calculations for water tank reinforcing) or such life and death requirements as an extractor fan in the kitchen in order to prevent anyone in the buildings from dieing of exposure to the rather nice aroma of bacon and eggs.

Another supposedlly needed piece of information is the excavation permit for a house that requires no excavation other than the pole holes for the pole platform and the edge strip for the slab footings. No allowance for the weeks that drift by waiting for staff to return phone calls is made in the system, nor for the time wasted listening to recorded messages as busy ratepayers try and get through to staff whose unique direct dial numbers remain closely guarded secrets. This has to change and soon.