Beginning of the end for TECT cheques
Consumer trust to wind up over 30 years, start community fund
Future generations will be the main winners of a decision to wind down the Tauranga Energy Consumer Trust (TECT) and its associated cheques over the next 30 years, business leaders believe.
TECT trustees confirmed yesterday they would go ahead with a plan to restructure the trust and wrap it up by 2050.
It planned to retain enough money, an estimated $291 million to $413m, to continue issuing TECT cheques — the nickname for the annual rebate to Trustpower customers in Tauranga and the Western Bay — over this period.
The rest would go to the new TECT Community Trust.
The restructure followed Trustpower’s announcement in January that it was looking at selling its retail business. If it sold, TECT beneficiaries would no longer be Trustpower customers.
TECT is a 26.8 per cent minority shareholder in Trustpower, which is New Zealand’s fifth-largest electricity company with 231,000 retail customers — about 53,000 in Tauranga.
Under TECT’S restructure plan, Trustpower customers in Tauranga and the Western Bay as of January 28 would continue to receive a rebate from TECT for 30 years, provided the funds were there and the customer continued to live in the area. New customers would miss out. The rebate will be $500 a year for the first 10 years, increasing to $600 in 2030 and $700 in 2040 to account for inflation.
The balance of funds, including the Trustpower shareholding, would be transferred to the new long-term community trust focused on grants for local community projects.
Priority One chief executive Nigel Tutt said TECT’S decision was a “very sensible and fair solution”.
“TECT already plays a valuable role in our community and this change will enable it to have an even more valuable role.”
Tutt said TECT had long picked up areas of community need not covered by councils or Government funders.
“So TECT plays a massively valuable role in helping some of those community organisations do the great work they already do. These changes will allow it to do it even more. The trustees have done a fantastic job.”
The Incubator Creative Hub director Simone Anderson was among about two-thirds of the nearly 800 submittors who were in favour of the move.
Anderson told the Bay of Plenty Times she believed TECT was an organisation with philanthropic and