WHO’S NOT LISTENING TO HARD WORKING NORTHLANDERS?

The Far North is well placed to benefit from a number of long run world-wide trends such as movement of people towards the equator seeking to escape harsh winter temperatures, and a shift away from large cities by technically savvy folk able to utilise the advantages of broadband access.

Our levels of construction activity, steady at around 125 building permits and 35 resource consents per month reflect these trends and show this is the stable level which council should be able to handle. The sad statistic is that every one of those 125 building consents would have been issued late and outside the mandated times of twenty working days.

Even worse, at least half of the extremely stressful resource consents would not have been needed in the first place if we had a more enlightened approach to citizen’s wishes..

The Mayor suggests that we, the public are not listening to economic warnings, but in my view it is the Council that is not listening and gearing up to meet the economic activities of its citizens in a timely and helpful fashion.

Anyone who has had a building permit application in recently, will tell you that the first information you receive is a statement that the council cannot meet its statutory timeline requirements. This is at least open and honest and is an improvement on the normal behaviour of waiting the twenty working days, having a glance at the plans and sending out a letter by snail mail asking for more information.

This has been used as a regular delaying tactic by councils all over NZ and is deceitful. Examples of recently received 20 day letters include a demand for an excavation resource consent for a pole house. Pole houses are all out of the ground with no excavation!

Senior Council staff members, Patrick Schofield and Pat Killalea, who are responsible for building permits and resource consents are aware of the pressures and acknowledge difficulties with staff recruitment probably reflecting years of low public esteem for FNDC.

I am sure they know of difficulties with overpaid underqualified planning consultants that they are forced to employ to harass our citizens, but the problem will not be fixed while the Mayor and other councillors deceive themselves into thinking all is well. It is not!

The call centre is appalling, most of logged calls are people ringing again to get past idiotic welcoming messages, no staff ring back to answer messages and in this modern day staff do not contact customers by email.
Start Listening!