How to keep warm

As the hours, days, and weeks tick by towards the submissions deadline for the LTCCP, anxious ratepayers are said to be camping out by their suburban mailboxes in hopes that a paperboy or postie will deliver some hint from Taupo Quay, or even Guyton Streeet, of just what it all means.

Dedicated Watchers, having surreptitiously passed around well-thumbed, dog-eared copies of the three-volume tome in the underground pubs, clubs and galleries of Visionville-on-Sea, are now using them to mulch their gardens or turning them into cheap pseudo logs to keep their fires burning through the long winter of discontent ahead (like the Watchers pictured above at a recent local government retreat).

Others of a more technological bent have crashed their computers scrolling up and down through the hundreds of pages of LTCCP posted on the council website (http://www.wanganui.govt.nz/) under the ironically titled invitation to “Have your say”.

With the Diva now on record as declaring the most senior survivors at Mr Maslin’s withered organ to be illiterate in matters financial, it seems likely that the Chronic’s copies of Vision’s Mein Kampf have been piled against the inside of the editor’s door to prevent newsroom staff entering the hallowed space and asking why they’re not allowed to write stories that might upset the mayor.

With just 22 days left till submissions close LawsWatch urges its loyal readers to get down to 101 Guyton St and pick up their very own copies of the three-volume tome. Chocolate mice with large ears will be awarded to anyone able to:

1. Figure out just how much ratepayers’ cash is going to be spent on spin (aka communications) in 2006-07;
   
2. Figure out how a city that is in a “perilous financial position” can contemplate building and running a gold-plated swimming pool; and
   
3. Get past the mayor’s opening salvo without gagging and reaching for the gin bottle: In many ways, this LTCCP is all about correcting the mistakes, misrepresentations and omissions of the last LTCCP published in 2003.

The Diva’s determination to keep the public and what passes in Whanganui as the Fourth Estate away from any discussion about how ratepayers’ money will be spent over the next decade probably came as a relief to the understaffed toilers at the Chronic, and passed without editorial demur. However, in a brief window of openness, democracy and transparency, Mary Bryan was invited in to witness a nice little local government tableau as the council voted to adopt the draft LTCCP with no one seriously challenging the mayoral spin.

All we learned was that Don McGregor had his kilt in a twist over the plan to abandon community and rural halls, Barbara Bullock was disappointed $62,000 had been cut from the community contracts for sport, recreation and environmental groups, and Sue Westwood said the plan was economic driven and took little account of the overall well-being of the community.

A big oops!! had held the plan up while the mayor’s money boys tried to placate Wellington Watchdogs who quite reasonably, and as required by the Local Government Act, insisted on a balanced budget. This appears to have prompted tantrums from the boy mayor and in his latest e-coli he throws his toys in the direction of the Audit Office and the Office of the Auditor-General who “seem as inefficient as the very organisations they are seeking to hold to account. Perhaps it is time to audit Audit."

That said, LawsWatch salutes the toilers of Guyton Street. While the mayor conjured up daily media distractions in a vain attempt to boost his disastrous radio ratings, the finished LTCCP represents months of dedicated midnight oil burnt by staff trying to meet deadlines on an ever-changing playing field.

He ensured they were constantly distracted by a barrage of mayoral demands including gang patch bylaws, a yoof council set-up to rival the worst excesses of the United Nations and last but by no means least, the $500,000 axe of unspecified cuts hanging over their heads.

Should any similarly beleaguered ratepayers feel the need to prepare submissions in the 22 days available, our advice is Don’t Mention the Swimming Pool. In fact, the Diva wasted no time making clear the futility of attempting to engage with this council in what the Local Government Act calls consultation. Here are his first (and last) words on that subject:

"Any submitters to the annual plan – who want the council to spend more money on their particular interest (ie non-Vision interest - ed) – should note that the only way to achieve their preferred spending is by lifting rates."

Meanwhile, for some winter’s evening entertainment, we recommend Watchers curl up with the remote and watch Wanganui’s part-time mayor being relentlessly skewered and outsmarted by a bunch of his fellow has-been minor celebs. The lure of Prime’s dollars is apparently sufficient compensation for him to don a Vision tee-shirt and line up to be outsmarted by Mike Hoskins (for heaven’s sake) and outwitted by Paul Holmes. Last night Mr Holmes suggested that as a part time mayor, the Diva would be a worthy recipient of a long distance pen with which to carry out his long distance Wanganui governance duties.

Comments on this post are now closed.