Physics for beginners

It seems the proverbial is headed for the fan at a blistering speed as the Diva's unplanned profligacy with other people's money makes it onto the Strategy Committee agenda for this Thursday.

After admiring all those nice shiny new votes which referendumbs gave the diVisionites to play with, Councillors are now finding they come with a price tag - one that Wanganui is going to struggle to pay.

Once again it's fallen to Keith Hindson to deliver the bad news on the Splash Centre. With the Diva's propensity to shoot the messenger, we'd imagine the Sits Vac columns are regular reading in the Hindson household. And now, Watchers, let's delve into financial management, Mickey (Mouse) style. According to Hindson:

External funding for the project currently sits at $525,928. The funding includes the Powerco Trust’s $500,000 and the Toyota raffle.

Ah yes, the raffle. Staggeringly, the only cash raised by John Unsworth and his cronies. Who was it that said back in September that he’d put his name down for fundraising to help out the poor country hicks? Oh, that's right - the Diva.

An application has been made to the Whanganui Community Foundation for $1 million.

That must have left a particularly bitter taste in the Mayoral mouth. After all, he's long had it in for the WCF and particularly the CEO Judith Timpany, a respected, competent woman with an admirable record of contributing to volunteering in Wanganui and beyond. Savour the irony, Watchers, as the Diva now begs the Foundation for cool $1 million to perhaps prolong the travel time of said excrement to fan.

The Lotteries Trust Board advises it only funds up to $10,000 for capital projects.

Whoopsie. Whose job was it to check these things before embarking on grandiose schemes? Not, surely, one of the new boy network? Not when everything is the fault of the old boy network, according to no less an authority than the Mayor himself, in his latest e-column (see post below).

As of December 2005 the FEC (LW: final estimate of cost) was $5,331,875.

So why has it taken till end of March 2006 for this gem to appear on an agenda? Anything to do with making things look rosy till after the plebs have voted, perchance. Apparently Dotty (chair of Strategy) tried to kick it into touch.

Hindson recommends that the council underwrites the entire $5,300,000. Well, what else could he do? Tell the Diva he'd made a giant mistake and he now had to break his promise to build this shining testament to his Mayoral magnificence? Not if he wanted any hope of keeping his job he wouldn't.

One would expect Unsworth to come in for a Mayoral spray but we're not holding our breath thanks to his business connections with Dotty's husband, making him firmly one of the new boys.

The funding group continues to fundraise and reimburse the council the shortfall currently anticipated at $3,163,000 within two years.

Let's see... that's $4332.88 a day. And they'll have to work Sundays.

Hindson then suggests that to reduce the upfront capital cost, the hydroslide could be dropped (that was on the table back in September) saving $655,000 for a total cost of $4,676,875.

But even then the cost escalation is already $130,000 and will increase by at least $1,300 a day thereafter. If the hydroslide stays, the daily escalation will be at least $1460 per day. So off you go, John... better start baking cakes and clearing out the garage for one huge sale.

Therefore the council needs to either identify further deletions to the project or commence work as soon as possible. This carries the risk that the community will not be supportive of a scaled back design.

Yes, and the risk that a duped populace might begin constructing a guillotine in Guyton Street, though Hindson wisely eschews mention of that particular fallout.

But he saves the real clincher till last. Winding up for the pitch, he lets go the excrement in the direction of the fan:

There is a real risk that the Council will have to fund the entire project.

Oh, and since that pesky LTCCP only identifes a budget of $2.5 million over two years, council "could be required to undertake the special consultative procedure"... in other words, to seek the public's opinion on just what they think of this almighty mess. That will be fun.

Drawing on our renowned powers of prediction, allow LawsWatch to suggest that the powers that be might be considering, say, the impost of a special rate on the long-suffering backs of Wanganuites (perhaps called a cultural facilities rate so the hoi polloi don't think it has anything to do with Mickey's excremental swimming pool outing).

But of course that would hardly wash with such an informed and interested electorate coming so soon after a buy-election in which the visionary candidate (nor anyone else for that matter) made no mention of such an intolerable burden... but then again...

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In keeping with...

...the Chron's idea of newsworthiness. Today it's people who weren't there for the Australian cyclone. Tomorrow it's...

The Emperor's striptease begins

"Video killed the radio star" predicted the Buggles back in 1979. Then later someone anticipated the effect of LawsWatch upon the Diva's less-than-stellar television efforts and came up with "Internet killed the video star".

As an astute Watcher noted, it's radio ratings time at present, so expect an increase in ranting from Guyton Street as Mr 1.5 Percent attempts to boost his ratings with a series of intemperate comments about... well, anyone and anything judging by past performance.

But the talk round Wanganui of late is about just who killed the Arts Festival. Festival Director Yvonne O'Connor told the Chron this was due to "a lack of community support and from the Wanganui District Council". The Festival had been running successfully since 1998 but suddenly found itself unviable under the present administration. So 18 months of planning and a tremendous amount of work by hundreds of volunteers across dozens of planned events goes down the drain for want of $9,000 - the difference between the $19,000 the organisers asked for from Council and the $10,000 they decided to give (in comparison to $15,000 in previous years).

We'd been under the impression that the strategy was to make Wanganui some sort of "events city" (as opposed to a non-event city) but it appears that unless the event offers naming and spotlight rights to the Diva it's not going to happen. The Arts Festival follows, of course, in the footsteps of the Film Festival - vibrant and viable to cocked-up and cancelled within the space of a year.

Why this sudden penury? Look no further than the latest e-coli e-column from the Mayor, headed "Is the money there?". The title alone is a worry.

After alleging that the Sarjeant Gallery extension was based upon "some patently false information and some irregular accounting" (have the police been called? the SFO? If not, why not?) the Diva reveals that yet another project is in financial deep water without a paddle - this time the riverfront.

Again he lambasts person or persons unnamed for "slack internal and political controls that used to exist". Surely this was under Colin Whitlock, the same man praised by Mickey upon his retirement and hired to write a book. Again, if things were truly that bad, oughtn't there to be an independent investigation?

So is this too to be dumped? Apparently not. "Readers will be aware that the riverfront development polled a healthy second in last year's capital works referendum, and that council committed itself to the project as a consequence", the Diva reminds us. That's the problem when no one - not even the proponents of a referendum - have the foggiest idea what anything will cost and use it merely as a populist device.

So Council is now faced with admitting the referendumb process is flawed and that Wanganui simply can't afford these projects - especially when, for want of $9,000, a significant community activity can be allowed to collapse - or going ahead with something, anything, come hell or high water.

The project will now be managed by a working party consisting of Crs Sue Westwood, Dot McKinnon, Murray Lindsay and the Diva. This lot will, he says, "generally introduce a hitherto absent professionalism". Riiiiiight. We'll watch this one with interest.

Meanwhile, also laying on the mortuary slab wired up to the strange looking machine awaiting a thunderstorm is the Splash Centre Extension.

Professor Mickeystein won't let this one die either, despite being forced to admit that the funding situation looks sicker than ever. "The project price has now risen from $4.5 million to $5.3 million due to the horrendous construction inflation index," a shocked Mayor reveals. Pity he didn't take notes from the several LawsWatch commenters who advised him of exactly that months ago.

But wait - there's more "In addition, a funding source that had been relied upon to donate substantially – the Lottery Grants Board – has apparently informed our working party that the project does not fit their funding definitions. In short, the project is about $2 million short – and that's after council's contribution of $2.5 million."

So... no one thought to check with the Lotteries Board beforehand? For instance, before offering this populist bauble to ratepayers with no costings attached?

"Council will need to find funding sources to bridge that shortfall. And quick. Every day we delay is a day that the cost gets greater". Do we detect a rising note of panic, Mickey?

Seems the Whanganui Community Foundation is going to be stood over to ensure it "plays a prominent role" (also known as "bails us out"). The Diva's rationale for this is that "its very name suggests that it exists for the sole purpose of funding community initiatives". On that basis, the Council's very name suggests it should take council from those who know what they're talking about but we all know that's never going to happen.

As the Diva desperately notes, "the people of Wanganui have clearly demonstrated that the Splash extension is their #1 initiative". Indeed they have, and they're now deflating their paddling pools and eagerly looking forward to next summer, when they can belly flop right into the middle of Mickey's Memorial Pool.

How ironic that the very people who fell hook, line and sinker (or rather snorkel, flipper and inflatable toy) for the Diva's uncosted populist nonsense are now the very people who may succeed where others have failed - in demonstrating to Wanganui that self-serving populism and calculated division can never successfully co-exist with fiscal responsibility. Or in a happy community.

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The answer is blowin' in the wind

We've waited and waited and waited some more... months, in fact... after first hearing of this story, first in deference to the fact that the informant who provided it was also helping Sean Hoskins write a piece for the Chronicle and asked that - just this once - LawsWatch not scoop Mr Maslin's increasingly incoherent organ. Second, because we wanted to give Cr Ray Stevens the freedom to act without being accused of being in some way an agent of the blog and those supposedly behind it at the time.

But two months after we (along with a number of other people) first heard the story - still nothing in the Chron. And with Sean's departure, nor is there ever likely to be. Now a commenter has reminded us of the issue:

Why haven't the Chronicle published Herr Laws' emailed threats against Cr. Ray Stevens, I wonder. Laws threatened Stevens with Code of Conduct action. Ray was telling everyone who would listen. I wonder why he suddenly went quiet...

Now one man's threat is another's bombastic, overbearing, dictatorial, antidemocratic (Enough adjectives... Ed.) chest beating. But the facts as we know them are these. On January 11, Ray Stevens somehow managed to slip through the Chron's censors, probably because the editor was on holiday and no one else was available to pop round to Guyton St for instructions from the Spin Fairy.

The letter wasn't exactly supportive of the Mayor, especially the nonsense he'd been spouting at the time about Wanganui Gas. (Steven Palmer had a similar letter published, and hence he got slagged off in the ecol-i e-newsletter the following day).

The Diva then apparently threatened Cr Stevens with a code of conduct complaint, thus proving once and for all that he has no sense of either irony or shame. Watchers all over Wanganui were breaking their ribs laughing about this, and one thought to call Sean Hoskins, who called Stevens, who gave him the story.

While in any other town those events would be extraordinary enough, in present day Lawsville they're pretty much run-of-the-mill. Where things really start getting extraordinary is what happened next.

When another Watcher called Sean that afternoon to check on the progress of the story, our intrepid journalist started blustering about some other email correspondence with the Diva that had been forwarded to him by someone calling himself Zimmerman in which he (Zimmerman) was rude about the mayor, and the mayor was apparently rude about him.

Sean admitted he figured Zimmerman probably wasn't real (our Sean mightn't have figured out all the machinations of Guyton Street, but he knows his Bob Dylan). But said he was going to sit on the Stevens story anyway till he could confirm or otherwise the existence of this Zimmerman.

The now incredulous Watcher asked what on earth Zimmerman had to do with Stevens. It was obvious, at least to the newshounds at the Chron - they both had received unfortunate responses from the Diva.

So... just so we're familiar with Mr Maslin's newsgathering modus operandi...

1. Link together two unrelated stories, one of which is almost certainly false, on the flimsiest of threads.
2. Then hold back publication of one story till you can prove the veracity of the probably false one (a logic puzzle which could keep one busy for hours... oh wait, that was the point).
3. If step 2 fails, publish neither.

Then later in the piece, Stevens allegedly asked Sean to hold off till his lawyer checked the Mayor's message for defamation. And whilst any other news organisation would have said "no way, you gave us an interview of your own free will and we're running with the story, sorry", the Chron evidently obliged.

Watchers have been waiting... and waiting... for this legal opinion to come through and for Cr Stevens to confirm what happens next. But we're beginning to think this story is much like the Mayor's credibility - gone, never to return.

So just what is happening here?

What was the content of the Mayor's email to Cr Stevens?

Why hasn't the Chron run the story?

Why hasn't Cr Stevens pursued the matter? Even if the email isn't defamatory, if it's contents are as reported there are still questions to be asked about the Diva's methods of attempting to silence his critics on Council.

Oh... and who is Mr Zimmerman and how'd he know to gather together a collection of titillating emails right when Sean needed to be distracted from the Stevens story?

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Stop them before they complain again!!

A virulent wave of some sort of summer flu has ravaged the LawsWatch cave this past week or so. We suspect the Mayor of putting something in the gin.

Then again, it could have been the shock of finding ourselves in agreement with the Diva for the second time this year, and it's only March.

Interviewer: "Is there such a thing as a typical Dog (Mobster)?"
Mob member: "Rape, kill and plunder! (Laughs) A typical Dog? To live like a Dog for the rest of your life and take all, and do all, that comes with it. And don't get stood on by no outsider."
Interviewer: "The Mongrel Mob are associated with a lot of violence. Do you ever worry about the spiritual backlash of murdering, raping or maiming somebody?"
Mob member: "If you don't care about anything outside the Mob then you don't have any guilty feelings or anything."
Later in the interview:
"We hate everybody and f**k, I mean everybody!"
"They should have stopped us from the day we started."

Quote from a interview with Harry Tam, Dunedin Mob spokesman, which you can read for yourselves in Staunch: Inside the Gangs by Bill Payne.

Mr Tam, of course, went on to land a job as senior policy analyst with the Corrections Department. Then, in pleading not guilty to an assault on his wife in 1994 where he beat her in front of their children, he claimed she'd consented to being assaulted.

There can be little doubt that an organisation with such a philosophy (and the Mongrels aren't the only ones who share it, of course) has any right to go about its "business" in Wanganui, or anywhere else. Or that anyone who stands up to thuggery, be they a public figure or private individual, places themselves at risk of reprisal and can therefore be said to be courageous.

Unless, of course, such opposition was merely ill-considered publicity seeking. We really do hope it's not - that it's an unusually principled stand from the usually unprincipled Diva.

But since one of the few groups who could possibly exercise any positive influence on such groups are local kaumatua and kuia, this is hardly the best time to be scoffing at the legitimate concerns of local iwi over the "H" issue - unless every utterance is measured not against what's best for the community but what will generate the largest headlines in the next day's Chron.

The chance to unite the community over one issue is being lost by posturing over another. We've previously advocated working toward a compromise so won't bore you with it again here. Rather than make deliberately inflammatory statements such as advocating Ken Mair drop his complaint to the Human Rights Commission and "spent time trying to convince gangs in Wanganui to stop selling P and cannabis in our community", the Mayor could choose to actually sit down with local Maori and enlist their help on such issues. But that's not going to happen when the two sides are trading slogans over the "H".

As a commenter wryly noted, Ken Mair's complaint, and the Diva's reaction, will do no harm in terms of their standing with their respective core support base. While Mr Mair is free to pursue his own ends, appealing to the redneck vote isn't what the Mayoralty is about - or least not what it's meant to be about.

It's to be hoped that two issues of grave importance to the people of Wanganui - the preservation of Te Reo Maori and the eradication, or at least neutering, of local gangs - don't get lost in the spin blitz from both sides.

Meanwhile, in an alternative reality, a Skinhead band has stolen the Mongrel Mob's symbolism. Perhaps if everyone clubbed together they could pop over to England and sort them out. It'd have to be one way, of course, due to lack of funds.

P.S. July 24 - 30 is Maori Language Week. That offers Wanganui a chance to show it does respect Te Reo Maori. We wonder what events are planned?

P.P.S. A kind commenter notes, inter alia:

I've noted some of the comments from people who are frustrated that the once daily postings are still not happening. That is probably because only a very few people are doing all the work and they've had a gutsfull trying to be the conscience of this town...

They fought the good fight and no-one stood beside them. The mayor and his mates picked them off one by one and where was the protest?... Wanganui doesn't deserve me, the arts activists or LW.

You're right, anonymous. When people were being personally vilified - often in the most ugly manner imaginable - for nothing more than holding an opinion contrary to the Mayor, there was a deafening silence. Perhaps Wanganui doesn't deserve LawsWatch. But one thing is obvious - the Mayor sure as hell does.

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...and He taketh away

We've always suspected the Diva of having a messianic complex. So it's little wonder that not only does the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but that Mickey is having a go too.

Not only are staff cuts on the agenda (and commenters are right, these should come as a surprise to no one, least of all the staff themselves) but cuts to services as well.

Oh, and a potential seven percent rates rise "just to stand still".

And whose fault is all this?

Surely not the Visionites, who rode to power on the back of promises of "nil" rates rises and improvements to services like gleaming new swimming pool extensions? Capping expenditure while increasing services has never been managed by any administration at any level anywhere, but that didn't stop the Diva. And to his credit, he managed to fool enough of the people enough of the time to get elected.

While lopping a few public servants off at the knees was always clearly on the agenda, Watchers can't remember the words "rates rises" let alone "borrowing" being used by the Diva's dwarves -- not even during the recent buy-election.

But they hadn't been in office a year when their hands went into the cookie jar and emerged with a $2.4 million loan. And now Wanganui-ites are being softened up for a rates rise which was always inevitable in a town which had essentially been left to stagnate in many respects.

No one likes a rates rise, but an honest politician would have put their cards on the table, presenting a list of unavoidable expenses (like, say, stormwater) and optional expenses (like, say, pool extensions) complete with budgets and allowed people to make intelligent decisions about what they wanted and how much they were prepared to pay to get it.

Instead, voters were led to believe that they could have a brand spanking new swimming pool and a redeveloped town centre (but not an art gallery that even met health and safety requirements) without having to fork across an extra cent in rates.

"Eey oop," they said, in that charmingly bucolic way they have, "if anyone's that clever with money, they'll get my vote! Why, I'll send the missus up Guyton Street to ask that clever bloke how she can serve t-bone steak every night without me having to give her any more housekeeping!".

According to the Diva this is everyone's fault but his, of course, telling the Chronic it was all down to "new audit requirements" and "some [items] missed out in the last [LTCCP] plan" and confirming "cuts to some council services and to staff numbers".

When even a casual observer of Wanganui's finances pre-Vision could see that the town was facing ongoing infrastructure costs such as stormwater separation and the wastewater treatment plant, let alone the costs of any wishlist projects such as the Heart or the Splash Centre, to now claim that the imminent belt-tightening has somehow snuck up on Council means one of two things. Either Vision was stupid, or they were dishonest.

It's not their fault they're now faced with having to make staff redundant, cut services, raise rates, or some combination of all three. It's not their fault they couldn't deliver increased services and infrastructure without increasing the rates burden and / or cutting back in other areas. No one could have been expected to achieve those things.

The point is, though, that no one else promised to, and got themselves elected on the basis of that promise.

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