Phil Barrett
Editor’s note: Mr Barrett sent the following letter to the Attorney-General, the coalition government and the Auditor-General on 4 April. The same letter sent to the editor of the ODT on 5 April went unpublished. He received confirmation emails from the Auditor-General, Winston Peters and the prime minister’s office. There was no reply from David Seymour or the four Clutha District councillors who were copied into the email, however Cr McCrostie did acknowledge the email in a text message.
Mr Barrett is a mechanic by trade and has worked on farms or in the service industry all his life. Concerned Citizens was a group started to push back against council excesses a few years ago. He was involved in Groundswell and drove from Clutha to Auckland for the Drive for Change.
Good morning
I am writing this letter from a place of complete frustration and am hoping for some clarification and perhaps some direction from this office.
I represent a growing group of people in the Clutha district that really have had enough of the behaviour of our local council.
Admittedly, the growing pressure from central government, applied to councils, to deliver seemingly unattainable targets has highlighted many deficiencies in management countrywide.
That aside, the Clutha district, a small, essentially rural, area of approximately 11,800 ratepayers, and a medium wage of only around 40,000 dollars, appears, at least, to be getting steamrolled by our council.
There is a never-ending list of agenda items brought before our elected councillors, prepared by staff, that just seem to be rubber stamped with the illusion of democracy.
To clarify, generally it is caused by an overspend or cost blowout of some description and the ‘but there is nothing we can do’ card is pulled from the administrative deck.
Any type of pushback or questioning is met with a totalitarian-styled rant from our Mayor Cadogan.
This excerpt from this year’s annual plan consultation document is typical of others printed in our local papers.
“A new and disturbing trend appeared with last year’s LTP, and we have no doubt the same will happen this year, where a small and often confused group insisted on running their own public meetings and Facebook-unfounded accusations ahead of council’s fully audited and fact-checked process. Our sympathy goes out to those of you that were unnecessarily upset or influenced by this group. We are legally obligated to go to extraordinary lengths to ensure the information you receive is scrutinized and factually verified. To have the entire process stained and distorted is frustrating, but we will continue to focus entirely on our responsibility to you, because the facts are challenging enough.”
Considering our CEO informed me that consultation documents are not audited as they generally contain assumptions and modelling rather than actual, known, numbers, I’d like some clarification on that.
My latest discovery of council’s ineptitude pales in comparison and rivals that of our big city counterparts: price per capita, it’s right up there.
At a full council meeting on the 5th of December 2024 (I will add the minutes as an attachment):
Agenda item 3 for decision was tabled.
Essentially a report showing an overspend of both the UAGC (uniform annual general charge) and the overhead components, totals of $801,311 and $1,748,574 respectively. And a recommendation to simply add these amounts to the current annual plan 25/26.
From the report, the UAGC deficit affects 10 of the 19 departments with two budgets blowing out by over $300,000.
The overhead component affected 13 of the 17 departments with notable blowouts of $586,424 for IT and $407,965 for service delivery capital delivery.
This incapacitates the cavalier attitude the Clutha District Council has towards spending and accountability and shows a systematic failure in management at almost every level.
The recommendation to add this to the 25/26 annual plan also came with the note: no consultation needed.
I was sure, when any function of council carried a rating impact to its ratepayers, consultation was required and, with a total of $2,548,885, I would expect there to be a rate impact.
I decided to check the debate on the livestream: the ombudsman had previously ordered that the Clutha District Council livestream all council meetings after unscrupulous behaviour had been reported previously.
The livestream stopped after item two: our new 19.5 million dollar swimming pool was passed for building.
I would have thought, with an overspend of almost $600,000 on the IT budget, we would at least get the livestream to work.
Please I ask for your consideration and assistance in this matter: families are suffering.
Yours sincerely
Phil Barrett
Clutha Concerned Citizens
