Bill Dalton

Last week I spoke of my imminent retirement and I mentioned some of the things I wanted to do. Now, one week into retirement, I am already realising that I’m going to have to be more organised than I was when I was full time at the office. Because one of the reasons I really wanted to retire was I had so much to do, so many projects I wanted to tackle in my workshop. And guess what? I haven’t had time to get near the place since I handed over my office key.

One of the projects I have been looking at over the last few days is the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council’s proposal to form an investment company. Like all proposals it is not all bad or all good, but on balance I see their proposal as being structurally flawed. For a start it is proposed that all the directors will be elected Regional Councillors. That begs the question – why can these people make better investment decisions wearing their “director of an investment company” hat than they can wearing their “Regional Councillors hat?”

We are told that the investment company structure is a tool for enhancing the council’s capability to manage an active investment policy. How does that happen when it is the same people making the decisions?

We are told that the investment company structure will provide access to financial tools not otherwise available directly to council. What are these tools that are suddenly going to become available just because the structure has changed?

We are told that corporate governance should be separated from political governance and yet we are also told that the council can direct the investment policy of the investment company. How do you reconcile that?

Much is made of the suggestion that an investment company would reduce the risk to which the council is currently exposed. That one has got me beat. Risk is ultimately carried by the shareholders in this case you and I the humble ratepayers. How can an investment company, with a stated intention to gear-up its portfolio by borrowing be of less risk to you and I then a non-geared portfolio administered by the very same people.

And lastly, I wonder what experience the current Regional Councillors, who would become directors of this investment company, have had in the use of the sort of financial instruments suggested for use in this proposal.

I for one have serious misgivings about the structure suggested in this proposal and even greater misgivings about the proposal document which is written like a car sales brochure. The idea has some merit but I believe it needs far more work and yes – thought.

It’s a somewhat strange feeling sitting making notes for this week’s piece.

After 25 years of scribbling notes in between appointments and then tossing them out for a typist to try and make sense of, I have suddenly realised I am no longer going to have the services of a typist. I’m going to have to write more tidily and then type my piece myself.

Because tomorrow – the 31st March 2011, I retire. After 42 years in the workforce, the last 30 of them behind the same desk, I have decided now is the time to move on to the next phase of my life. And whilst it is a well planned and considered move, when it comes to the reality that on Friday I am no longer on the payroll, it really is a bit scary.

I have worked in the financial industry for the last 32 years and for much of that time, I have been advising clients on saving for retirement. Putting a nest egg together that will help them enjoy their retirement years. And it will be no surprise to you to know that the most frequently asked question I have been asked is “how much do I need?” What size portfolio do I need to allow me to retire in comfort?

The short and simple answer to that question is simply save as much as you can. Clearly with the cost of living today and the fact that salaries and wages have not kept pace with increased costs it is difficult to put money aside for the future. But any money you can put aside during your working life will enhance your standard of living in retirement.

But money is only one side of the retirement argument. The other is time, what are you going to do with your time when you retire? You have been so used to getting up and going to work every morning, what are you going to do now you don’t have to?

And that’s where I’m so fortunate. Firstly I have my Napier City Councillor duties and I’m looking forward to being able to devote more time to that responsibility. Secondly I have my workshop and my race and vintage cars to enjoy. And thirdly we are keen to do a bit more travelling. Oh – and did I mention – my wife wants me to start exercising, loose some weight and get fit.

So it’s going to be an interesting adjustment at every level and I’m looking forward to the challenge.

I am beginning to think that Hawke’s Bay is becoming the home of the Knockers – the natural dwelling of those with negative minds.

It doesn’t matter where I go, I encounter negative comments about both Napier and Hastings and the performance of our city councils. Frankly most of the criticism is emotional crap and the critics usually show their ignorance regarding their chosen gripe.

In Napier we hear criticism of the decision to spend $18m on rebuilding the HB Museum and Art Gallery. Some poor misguided souls even go as far as to suggest that this $18m would have been better spent on Marineland. Those simple folk don’t seem to be able to get their heads around the fact that one third of that total comes from the Government and it is tagged specifically for museums. The Government will not give one cent to Marineland – in fact they actively oppose the idea of rebuilding Marineland. Another 20 odd percent of the museum budget is coming from the wider region – simply because the museum houses the region’s treasures. I am sure that that money would not be forthcoming for Napier to build a marine park which is frowned upon by both the Government and DOC. So much of the criticism around the museum and art gallery is ill-informed and simply nonsense.

The obvious answer to these knockers is to tell them to stand for their council. Tell them to put their hand up next time, put the money up to run a campaign, go out day after day and night after night to meetings that are often poorly attended. Tell them, that if they have all the answers, their city and their region really needs them.

I hear people grizzling about the cost of the hanging baskets in Hastings. Well I don’t know what they cost but I can say that I have been to Hastings several times in recent weeks and I think they are spectacular and a real credit to the city.

Napier needs to do something to liven up its inner city. As the café capital of the Bay, I would like to see more music introduced to our city. There is an amazing pool of talent in our city and I would like to see regular, rostered entertainment provided throughout the CBD. I often see the cruise ship tourists wondering aimlessly around, having had their fill of Art Deco masonry. I am sure they would love to sit a while and listen to good artists.

But what we really need in Hawke’s Bay is some positive thinking. We need to look for solutions not concentrate on the problems.

And we need to get rid of the knockers who in my mind are just making tits of themselves.

I was intrigued to read a recent letter to the editor in the HB Today, where the correspondent, one Max Spurdle, suggested that the Napier City Council buy the Cossie Club and turn it into a bus terminal.

Now I have to say that this idea has merit. In fact it is the best idea Max has come up with since he suggested we paint a gold pin-stripe down the side of my Morris Minor in 1968 – or was it ’69.

But the problem with Max’s suggestion is cost. The inter-city bus company has made it very clear that they have no intention of contributing one cent to a bus terminal in Napier. So every cent would have to be contributed by the ratepayers of Napier, most of who will never travel to or from Napier by bus in their lives.

Such a project would have a massive impact on rates – just at a time when we need to be very careful indeed.

New Zealand is borrowing money like the country has never done before. And, due to the impact of the Christchurch earthquake, we are going to have to borrow an enormous amount more. One day that will all have to be paid back. That means the tax take is going to have to increase and you and I are going to have to pay more to central government. That is going to be tough so we need to keep rates down.

There is also no question that New Zealand’s local bodies are going to get a stir-up from the government in terms of the earthquake safety of their buildings. Already Napier has been reviewing building standards and frankly some serious questions have been raised.

So Max, I applaud your idea – we just can’t afford it.

And speaking of risks from earthquakes – I am a fatalist. I believe that when your numbers up your numbers up. But as a councillor I have a responsibility to try and make our residents and visitors as safe as possible. So we are looking at our commercial buildings, at the council’s own buildings and doing everything we can to make them safe.

But it is a balancing act. No old building, however it has been “earthquake proofed,” will be as safe as a new building built to the latest code. And those rules are bound to become tougher once the performance of buildings in Christchurch is analysed.

So we shouldn’t panic or fret about earthquakes and their effects on our buildings, we should just do what we can and then keep our fingers crossed.

Last week I made comment about so called informed public opinion. My comments were in relation to matters of national importance. Frankly the same crap is being spouted on a local level and sadly by people who are perceived as being successful business people and therefore leaders of public opinion. Firstly we had Rodney Green – by anyone’s measurement of success – a successful businessman – suggesting that Napier Marineland should be rebuilt. Now Rodney’s no fool. You will note that his contribution to this cause was a night or two at one of his establishments and a free feed at another. The net cost to him? Next to nothing. Of course if Marineland is resurrected at a net cost to the humble ratepayer, guess who will benefit most? You guessed it – Rodney Green, the self proclaimed hospitability guru of Napier.

Then we had my friend Pat Benson. Now Pats a good guy and I can only presume that the interviewer caught him as he was leaving the Rugby Club or some other watering hole. Because his comments do not stand up to any intelligent scrutiny and frankly were ill-informed garbage. To suggest that if Napier City gave the land somebody would build a Surfers Paradise like Marineland is at best naïve and at worst pathetic rubbish.

Frankly, such ill-informed rubbish from two of our supposedly leading businessmen is simply disappointing. Worse – they both are, or should be, fully acquainted with the facts. How can they dare to spout such crap? What is their self-interested motive?

Big business has had years of opportunity to come up with a viable future for Marineland and have obviously not been able to make the numbers work. It now seems that they want Napier ratepayers to take the commercial risk on this project. Frankly that is unacceptable.

And the other thorn under my saddle is the idiots who say – how can the council spend $18m on the HB Museum and Art Gallery and yet they can’t afford to rebuild Marineland?

Let me ask them a simple question. How much of the $6 million the Government is contributing to the new Museum – through the New Zealand Museums Fund – would have been available to Marineland. If they have got problems with the answer to that question let me answer it for them. None – not a cent.

All those people who are comparing the funding for the HB Museum and Art Gallery with the lack of funding for Marineland need to take a reality check. The Government turned us down for funding for Marineland. DOC turned us down for funding for Marineland. NIWA turned us down for funding for Marineland. The truth is no one – apart from a few local radicals – who have no dough – wants to fund the sort of Marine Parks that Marineland represents. Marineland is a thing of the past and the challenge to us all is to find a replacement attraction to grace Napier’s Marine Parade. If we all put our shoulders to that wheel, Napier would be the better for it.

I am delighted that the members of the Napier City Council unanimously agreed to enter into discussions with “The Friends of Marineland” with regard to the future of the site currently occupied by Marineland on Napier’s Marine Parade. But if we are going to make progress on this difficult issue, we need to see a level of honesty that has yet to be demonstrated by “The Friends.”

So far we have seen Cliff Church claiming that he is delighted to have the opportunity to enter into dialogue with the Council because his group has been denied that opportunity in the past – a patently absurd proposition given the opportunity all Napier citizens have been given, to make submissions on the future of Marineland.

Now we have another spokesperson for “The Friends”, Ms Woodhams, suggesting that the Napier City Councillors have chosen to ignore community feedback and submissions in making their decision to close Marineland. Let me make it very clear. No submissions were ignored – every submission was considered carefully.

In fact I can tell you that in my three years plus as a Napier City Councillor, there has been no single issue that has been debated, argued, discussed or pondered over more than Marineland. We have called for submissions, spent days hearing them and days considering them. We have had meetings, presentations from consultants, seminars and strong debate in the Councillors room.

Every single Napier City Councillor agonized over this decision and only time will tell whether our decision was the right one or the wrong one. But let us move on. Let us, as a community say, where to from here? What can we do with this site that will help Napier prosper?

I challenge my friend Cliff Church to consider that both the Government and the Department of Conservation are against the proposal to revitalize Marineland and to join with us and help us find a new attraction for Napier’s Marine Parade that is acceptable to all the community.

We are all in this together – we all want what is best for Napier. Our views may differ but our aims are the same.

Cliff and Denise – honesty, not emotional claptrap is essential to progress this matter.

The promotion of Hawke’s Bay’s tourism has a sorry history. Whatever the promotional group has been called – Vision 20/20, HB Inc, Venture Hawke’s Bay, it has been long on promises and short on delivery.

The promotion of Hawke’s Bay in an economic development sense has been no more successful. And it’s my view that one of the reasons for this lack of success is that we lump both activities – the promotion of tourism and the promotion of economic development, into the one organisation. Sure tourism is a driver of economic development but obviously it is only one of the drivers of growth.

Clearly attracting tourists to our region will have economic benefits for us all. But so will attracting industry, encouraging hi-tech operations to move to the clear air of the Bay, developing new crops for our horticultural industry, those sorts of things. We need to concentrate on the non-tourism drivers of economic growth every bit as much as we do on the tourism driver.

We need to do more than simply say, we are nice people and live in a nice part of the country, come and join us. We need to offer practical help.

The Napier City Council is developing a new business park and the intention is that this facility will be a classy, clean business park as against a grubby industrial area. I really support this initiative, but we need to do more than just provide the facility to encourage business to start or re-locate to Hawke’s Bay. In fact there is a real danger that some businesses will simply move from the Onekawa industrial area to the new business park, leaving even more vacancies in Onekawa.

If we really want to attract new industry to Hawke’s Bay, either start-ups or relocations, we need to offer financial inducements. I know that is a path fraught with difficulty but that is no reason to ignore it.

I would like us to set-up a regional development fund. The Napier City Council could contribute by selling off non-strategic parcels of land currently leased at a poor return and the Regional Council could contribute from its enormous piggy bank. Low cost loans could be offered, rates holidays could be funded, some development costs could be subsidised.

Direct financial inducement will always be the best way of helping new businesses and the word that assistance is available would soon get around.

So let’s start thinking outside the square when it comes to economic development in the Bay. Let’s not go down the same old boring road that has proven to be so unrewarding in the past.

I guess the big news of the last week has been the Napier City Council’s decision to close Marineland permanently. And you can rest assured that every single Councillor is disappointed to have had to make that decision. And if Cliff Church follows through with his threat of legal action to prevent the closure it will be even more disappointing for the Councillors and ratepayers alike. Legal action will simply result in substantial and unnecessary costs being imposed on the ratepayers. Cliff needs to remember he stood on a “Save Marineland” ticket at the recent election and was soundly defeated.

The decision to close Marineland was the correct one – in fact in the end it became the only sensible option.

Marineland has been costing ratepayers $10,000 per week as it sat closed whilst we considered all options. Many had called for Marineland to re-open whilst we considered our alternatives and that would have resulted in a cost to ratepayers of $14,000 per week. We don’t make these decisions lightly or without proper investigation.

Many Councillors were reluctant to make the final call on the basis that “where there’s life there’s hope”. The final telling piece of evidence brought to us was the condition of the infrastructure on the site. The pumps and pipe work are shot, salt has got into the reinforcing steel and is blowing the concrete to bits – the whole place is past its use-by date. This news, following on from correspondence from DOC stating they were against the keeping in captivity of any marine mammals and correspondence from the Government through the Minister, urging us to refrain from keeping marine mammals in captivity, sealed Marinelands fate.

Now we need to move on.

For too long we have devoted our energies to “What are we going to do with Marineland?” That decision is now made. We need to start to focus on “What are we going to do with the Marineland site?” Quite a different question.

We have a blank canvas. What picture can we paint on it that will attract families to Napier and encourage them to stay longer? What unique attraction or one that other towns may have that we can do better, can we put on the Marineland site to boost our tourism industry.

My challenge to Cliff Church and his followers is to work with us in the interests of Napier, to come up with a suitable and acceptable attraction that will enhance our city. If we all pull on the same end of the rope, I am sure we can land the right facility.

I am intrigued by the sudden flurry of letters to the editor in the Hawke’s Bay Today, that are critical of the Napier City Councils action– or as the correspondents usually see it – inactions.

If you took some of these letters seriously, you would start to believe that Napier’s Councillors wanted to see the City die. And that of course is rubbish.

The last three years have been some of the most difficult economic times most of us will ever experience and yet the Napier City Council’s books are in the best shape they have ever been in. And you don’t have to go very far from Napier to see local body books that are in nowhere near the excellent shape ours are in. Sure we have had to pull our horns in. Sure we would have liked to do more around the City, but it wasn’t the time. It was a time to be prudent, a time to be cautious. The correspondents to the local paper might like to reflect on the fact that their Council is in one of the soundest financial positions of any Council in New Zealand

So what does that mean for Napier now? It means we have come through the recession in a shape that allows us to assist the City to progress over the next few years. And I say assist because the Napier City Council can not wave a magic wand or in fact a cheque book and do all the things that the critics would have us do. Sometimes people have to get off their butts and do something themselves rather than expect the government or local government to do everything for them.

Why is it that we New Zealanders always believe it is someone else’s responsibility to do things on our behalf and that the failure for things to happen is always someone else’s fault.

Why is it that we New Zealanders so often don’t get up and do things ourselves, we would rather criticise someone else or some other organisation for things not being done.

Why is it that we New Zealanders so often take the negative view when, if we all worked together in a positive manner we could achieve so much more?

From a Councillor perspective, we have a responsibility to take a big picture view and to do what is good for the City, even if it doesn’t suit some individuals at the time.

And I for one will continue to take that big picture view.

During the recent local body election campaign, the unsuccessful candidate Robin Gwynn, made a big issue of his support for the current partial Ward system we currently suffer under. His principal complaint was that the Napier City Council had done nothing to promote the system, had not bothered to introduce the Ward Councillors to the people in their Wards – in fact he blamed the failure of this stupid system totally on the Napier City Council.

Well I’ve got news for Dr Gwynn. The reason why the system doesn’t work is because it is a silly bloody system. It is a poor compromise that offers nothing and delivers less.

I now hear my colleague Councillor Maxine Boag repeating this nonsense. Maxine said on the radio last week that most Napier people don’t know what Ward they are in. A bit insulting I thought but the fact is they don’t know because it doesn’t matter to them – they live in Napier.

Let me acquaint you with the facts.

Napier City Councillors are paid between $34,000 and $38,200p.a. Six are elected citywide or at large and the other six are elected from prescribed Wards. Three of those six were elected unopposed in the recent election. It is a requirement that all Councillors work in the best interests of the City of Napier whether they are elected in a restricted area Ward or they are elected by the Napier Ward.

Yes we are all Ward Councillors – the Ward I represent is the City of Napier Ward.

Why is it the Napier City Councils responsibility to introduce Ward Councillors to their constituents? Surely if Ward Councillors, who represent restricted area Wards feel they are not known, feel that their people don’t know what Wards they are in, they could do something about it. They could call a Ward meeting, they could institute regular Ward workshops, they could organise regular Ward clinics. They could simply be pro-active in the area they have chosen to represent. Again I ask, why is this “Ward activity” the responsibility of the Napier city Council when these are well paid Councillors who are dependent on the support of their constituents for their jobs.

This half and half system is a sham. There should only be one Ward – the Napier City Ward.

One of the strong arguments for a Ward system in Napier used to be that using the citywide system resulted in a City Council over weighted in residents of the Napier Hill. We now have six citywide Councillors and only two live on the hill. We have six restricted Ward Councillors and one of them lives on the hill but represents the Nelson Park Ward.

The whole system is just stupid for a small City the size of Napier.

My great hope is that we can get rid of this appalling system with the minimum of fuss. There are more important issues that Napier City Councillors need to apply themselves to over the next three years.