Your Questions Answered - Council reflects on improved performance

 

Welcome, Dr Jill McPherson.

Dr Jill McPherson took over the top management job of Council last week, following Steve Ruru’s departure to take up the Chief Executive position at the Southland District Council. Jill will be the Kaipara District Council’s Acting Chief Executive until well into next year.

Jill lives in Mangawhai. She is well known to many in Mangawhai for her community work.

A second year of good financial performance at Council Steve Ruru finished his term on 30 September by tabling year-end Council accounts, with financial performance on track and on budget. Commissioners have now formally adopted the Annual Report and Accounts for the financial year ending 30 June 2014. The accounts were audited by Deloitte, and received a clean audit report with the excep-tion of the matter of the MRRA appeal.

From a financial per-spective, two key goals have been met by the Council: 

• For the second year in a row, the Council has generated a small surplus - just over one million dollars. This in-dicates that the Council is managing its budgets well.

• For the second year in a row, the Council’s debt has decreased. Bank debt now stands at $76.3 million.

Council has had to ex-pend moneys that were not budgeted that could have been used for more positive purposes, in the defense against the ac-tions taken by the Mangawhai Ratepayers & Residents Association in the High Court. Regretfully, the action is now moving to the Court of Appeal, as the Associa-tion, unhappy with the judgment, appeals the rulings.

Other than such ex-penditure related to his-tory, Commissioners are maintaining a tight rein on expenditure. Efficiencies have been gained from managing our major contracts better, but we are aware that service levels – like our investment in unsealed roads – are at a relatively low level, especially when attempting to cope with this last very wet winter season.

Investment in capital works on our roads to increase Work on roads over this past year has been low with respect to rehabilitation and capital investment, due to our decision to defer some $6.5 million of works to accommodate the impact on Council cash flows from those who were refusing to pay any rates. Once the High Court ruled that the Council rates were valid “for all purposes”, many such property owners paid up. With this cash now in the bank, we will catch up on all deferred works this summer. The road works capital investment programme will be nearly double that of a normal year.

Surf Life Saving Surf Life Saving ap-plied to Council last month for further fund-ing to increase their life-guard services. Council has agreed to increase funding to give cover-age at Baylys on Ripiro Beach from 22 Decem-ber 2014 to 12 January 2015, and coverage at Mangawhai Heads from 15 December 2014 to 30 January 2015.

This brings the total funding from Council to Surf Life Saving for this summer season to $31,000. This is rates at work – to reduce risks of tragedy at Kaipara’s most popular beach-es on the east and west coasts. St John and the New Zealand Fire Service.

Like surf life saving, it is important that we support our emergency services, including ambulance, fire and rescue. St John is establishing itself on Council land in Mangawhai Park, and it is likely that the Fire Service in Mangawhai will also move to this lo-cation.

The Kaipara District Council has responsibilities in law as a “Fire Authority”. We adopted a District Fire Plan last month, which is now in effect. There are rules around the lighting of fires in the open contained in this plan. If you wish to read the plan, it is available on the Council’s website, www.kaipara.govt.nz.

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