TDC Long Term Plan ‘basically locked in’

The adoption on Thursday of the Tasman District Council Long Term Plan 2018-28 consultation document came with a warning to potential submitters: Don’t expect any big changes.

‘‘It’s really frustrating and quite annoying to go through the 2000 pages ... and not have any say in what we can change,’’ said Cr David Ogilvie after he heard alterations could not be made to the consultation document.

‘‘I hope we’ll be saying the same thing to the submitters: ‘You can write 10 pages on this but really, we’re going to give you the fingers because you can’t change a thing’,’’ he said. ‘‘We are basically locked in and this is nonsense, it really is nonsense.’’

Long-serving councillor, deputy mayor Tim King also indicated big changes were unlikely.

‘‘The way it now works and the complexity and the audit requirements, and the need to fit into a fiscal constraint does make it very difficult to then go out to the community and come back and try and deliver what inevitably a lot of people will want to do, which is shovel it all around and shift it about,’’ King said.

‘‘I think, we just have to be upfront and honest about that; it’s actually not easy to rejig this thing through the next stage, it’s very difficult, actually.’’

It was Tasman mayor Richard Kempthorne who said the consultation document could not be changed.

‘‘We’ve been through the whole thing, it’s gone to audit, it’s been signed off,’’ Kempthorne said. ‘‘If we try to fiddle around with it today then we totally blow out the timeframe.

‘‘We’ve done all the changing over the months previous to now.’’

Strategic policy manager Sharon Flood told councillors it had been almost two years since work started on the Long Term Plan, which included an early round of community engagement.

‘‘We had a number of community meetings and we got feedback about some of the things they thought we needed include,’’ she said.

‘‘I think, we’ve had over 30 to workshops during that time to discuss these issues so you have a huge amount of paper.’’

While the plan itself had more than 2000 pages, the consultation document was 40 pages long. The remainder was detailed supporting information.

Open for public submissions from March 1 to April 5, the LTP programme is built around proposals to keep net debt under $200 million and rates revenue increases under 3 per cent a year, plus an allowance for growth.

In a statement released after the meeting, Kempthorne said while storms this month had required an immediate and urgent response from the council, its long-term planning could not be neglected.

‘‘It might seem like an odd time to ask our communities to think about long-term challenges when so many have really urgent concerns to deal with,’’ he said.

‘‘The recovery from [extropical] cyclones Fehi and Gita will carry on for quite some time, and we will have a key role to play in that.’’

Planning for and responding to natural hazards was an ‘‘important part of what we do’’.

‘‘It was one of the key issues we identified in our previous Long Term Plan and now building resilience to natural disaster is considered in our projects and work streams on an ongoing basis,’’ the mayor said.

Over the next decade, the coun- cil would continue that work while also tackling challenges largely related to population growth, infrastructure development and ensuring safe drinking water supplies.

The council proposes providing land and investing in new infrastructure to support medium/high growth, with a ‘‘growth investment’’ of $58m over 10 years.

Cr Peter Canton asked what would happen if the community ‘‘overwhelmingly rejects’’ the proposals.

‘‘Are you actually saying that we can’t revisit it, these are locked in and this is the way it will go?’’

Kempthorne said once the submissions came back ‘‘we can reconsider’’.