WEL discounts
A cautionary tale: In the mid 1990s, I was elected to sit alongside the Central Hawke’s Bay mayor on the CHB Power Consumers Trust. The full trust was elected with the exception of the mayor whose seat was as of right.
I was perceived to be the only member who came from a ‘‘working-class background’’ while the rest were well-todo farmers and business people. Eventually my input was valued when it was seen that I was pragmatic and not some raging socialist.
It was the trust which appointed the board of directors of the lines company, and with CHB being a farm-servicing centre the appointments were almost nepotistic within the parochial hold on those positions. At some point, because of some change in supply costs or similar transactions between the lines company and the grid/generation companies, the trust was to receive a small rebate in the approximate amount of $64,000 for the trust to rebate to local consumers. The lines company board, without the required reference to the trust, awarded
that money to itself in various amounts according to status, ie, more for the chairman and less for the directors. When the trust objected to what the board had done, the board virtually told the trust to take a hike. The mayor who also chaired the trust was very against what the board had done, but due to the parochial connection of his status as mayor (of long-standing), declared himself to be powerless.
Because I was considered ‘‘an outsider’’ by most of the local business and farming community, and because I had some legal skills, the trust in their concern and as individuals asked me if I could write a letter in the local paper asking what had become of the rebate . . . in such a way that the trust as it stood could not be seen as being legally in breach of its charter. I wrote the letter . . . the money was returned to the trust . . . the directors, with the exception of one who had voted against the other directors, resigned en mass. I was congratulated by my fellow trust members . . . yet not surprisingly, I was never voted back on to the trust.
Let us hope that the actions of WEL and its trust prove to be beyond reproach in this matter.
Dennis Pennefather
Te Awamutu