We hope Wanganui is well endowed

Fascinating as all the to-ing and fro-ing in comments to the last post are, none answer the question: What assets? Our Deep Throat commenter from the mayoral dunny has been uncharacteristically reticent on this topic and we got tired of waiting, so dispatched a Watcher to obtain a copy of Wanganui District Holdings report to next Tuesday's administration and finance committee meeting.

The agenda helps answer the $2.5 million question of just what is going on with the asset sales that were supposed to to be delivering bucketfuls of cash by now for the Splash Centre.

As one of the anonymii pointed out this morning, moves by the Diva to borrow the dollars promised to the Splash Centre crew, and for the waterfront development, mark a remarkable turnaround from what he was saying just six months ago:

Mayor Laws... said that funding of referendum items would be based on the conversion of old Council assets to the new Council assets, therefore, for a referendum project to proceed the Council must first sell an asset to gain the funding required. (WDC Meeting minutes 26 April 2005)

The report of Wanganui District Holdings suggests the unseemly pressure coming from the Diva of Indebtedness sits uncomfortably with its business plan which sets a primary objective of "maximising the monetary returns on assets over the medium to long term". In fact, the WDH board recommends that that the council endorses this laudable aim.

It then goes on to say, however:

While recognising there is a cashflow-driven shorter term programme to divest property deemed surplus to council's operating requirements, the holding company's over-riding driver remains to maximise returns over the medium to long term.

Seems to be an implication there that one thing - the short-term, populist-driven divestment programme - isn't wholly compatible with the other - maximising returns.

Meanwhile, there's no escaping the Diva's demands for instant gratification and the report goes on to explain what's happening with the Great Land Sale, excerpted here:

There are 48 properties listed for sale, across three portfolios and divestment funds may only be used as follows:

• City Freehold: pay off debt or reinvest in assets or services offering greater amenity value to the District.
• City Endowment Fund: all capital (divestment proceeds) must remain withCitye Ciity Endowment Fund and net income can be 'dividended' to Council or reinvested.
• Harbour Endowment; all capital (divestment proceeds) must remain within the Harbour Endowment. Net rental income is payable (effectively a negative rent) to River City Port Ltd under the terms of the company's lease from Council (as administrator of the Harbour Endowment) to be used for port operations.

So far only three properties have been sold for a total of $155,000 - in Heads Rd, Mosston Rd and Poslon St. One is city endowment, one city freehold and one harbour endowment.

Ten city endowment properties have been approved for sale by the Office of Treaty Settlements (so one commenter's assertion that the Treaty of Waitangi has no impact on Council land, only Crown land, goes up in smoke (and mirrors)) and seven of those seem to have buyers waiting. Nineteen harbour endowment properties are listed for sale but are "on hold pending a review of harbour operations". City freehold sites marked for sale need to be re-zoned in order to maximize sale returns.

Subdivisional potential has been identified for a portion of Windsor Park (excluding the Durie Hill Bowling Club), a portion of Hylton Park and Montgomery Reserve - and an external consultant has been asked for a report on these, due early in the new year.

Westbourne Estate industrial land at Castlecliff has conditional agreements for about 12 hectares, netting about $800,000 after fees and service provision.

Even with all this information, many questions still remain:

• Can the Council, as one commenter has suggested, simply deem any project it wishes part of the endowment thus allowing it to spend the capital received from the sale of city endowment property on something like the Splash Centre?
• How much are the sales of all the properties so far identified likely to raise, and will they meet the entire burden of any loan(s) taken out to deliver on referendumb projects? If not, what's the contingency plan?
• What is the iwi's view on these sales? Have they even been consulted? (We've invited them to comment on this).
• While people undoubtedly voted for money to be spent on the Splash Centre and Riverfront development ahead of other options, all the options offered were for new projects. We're willing to bet that most people thus assumed that Council could afford to meet it's usual and legal obligations and fund whatever top two or three projects were chosen. But would responsible citizens want money spent on anything new when Council seems unable to meet such basic legal requirements as OSH standards, potentially exposing it to unknown levels of liability?

Note I: We've held over a post planned for today on forestry issues. Watch for that early next week.
Note II: Short of entertainment this weekend? Pop across to Rotorua and put a glass to the wall at the NZ First AGM and "Annual Conference".

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