Goodwill flushed down the drain

I’m not one of life’s gamblers. Never have been. Poker and roulette baffle me, I never won in the school raffle, and if I ever have a flutter on a horse, that horse tends to fall down the moment the race gets under way – usually shot dead by the starter’s pistol.

However, next month, when New Plymouth District Council (NPDC) begins hearings on its longterm plan for the decade ahead, I may well be heading down to the TAB and slapping some cash on the counter.

Tell me, how many of you would be willing to bet $1000 on councillors approving water meters? Better still, how many of you would be willing to bet $1000 on councillors NOT approving water meters? It’s a tricky one, isn’t it? Especially after NPDC earlier this month placed – and then swiftly withdrew – an advert for a ‘Senior Project Manager – Universal Water Metering’.

That advert was, to say the least, somewhat previous; a bit like setting the wedding date before you’ve proposed to your intended. Or even met them.

But to be fair to NPDC, almost as soon as the issue was raised, the advert was withdrawn.

In a statement, the council said there was never any intention of pre-empting the decision-making process. They had simply wanted to be well-prepared if councillors voted to go ahead with watersaving plans to meter 26,000 homes.

I’m not sure when the chosen candidate was to have been told that the job was only provisional, because the advert did not mention it.

Perhaps that was to come after they’d resigned from their current post.

Mayor Neil Holdom apologised, saying in a statement that ‘‘advertising of a role before council has made a decision was an error of judgment, is a bad look and has served to undermine the excellent work of the wider team in taking our plan to the community’’.

He’s not wrong there. It was an embarrassing own goal that will be thrown back at council for years to come.

‘‘I think the term ‘bad look’ is a major understatement,’’ wrote one of many commentators predictably responded when the story was shared in a Facebook post.

‘‘Just shows that the New Plymouth District Council has no intention of listening to the people who elected them.’’

Another wrote: ‘‘I won’t bother putting in a submission again that’s for sure. Why waste my time and energy when they’ve already decided?’’

Now the councillors are in a bit of a bind. If they approve water meters (as submissions indicate a majority of ratepayers want) cynics will say they were going to do it all along anyway. And if they reject water meters are they just doing it to prove they hadn’t made up their mind? Suddenly the decisionmaking process is suspect.

This element of cynicism is a genuine pity, because NPDC really did go out of its way to consult on the long-term plan, spending $30,000 to advertise it, and an additional $10,000 towards roadshow community events.

You do not do that if you never had any intention of listening to what people tell you. Short of offering a free dinner for every completed submission, there’s not much else they could have done.

When only 1000 or so submissions had been received, NPDC brought down its beloved book of shock tactics.

As an act of selfsabotage the advertisement was pretty hard to beat.

This is, lest we forget, the council that once came up with the poo emoji campaign to get people to vote.

This time, they suggested the apparent apathy meant everyone was happy with the draft proposals, which (and here’s another thing that you shouldn’t forget) come with a double-digit rates increase. Perhaps they had a point.

In the end, about 4500 submissions were received – not a huge number considering 86,000 people could have taken part, but certainly not bad.

Interestingly, 4500 was roughly the same number of people who got involved in the previous long-term plan discussions that got so heated because of a proposal to sell off half an inner-city golf course.

That tells you something. All that effort, and it’s still only a minority who bother.

Presumably, many of those who submitted this time also submitted last time, and while their opinions are welcomed, fresh voices, new opinions, are also needed.

And they need to be confident their opinion will be listened to because if they aren’t, why would they bother?

As an act of self-sabotage the advertisement was pretty hard to beat. How many of those 4500 submitters will still make the effort in three years’ time when the next plan is drawn up? But before you ponder that, come and meet me down at the TAB and let’s have a flutter on water meters.