Have Administrators Pre-judged the Budget Process?

“Do you know of the winki pop president?”

“Yes, I do yeah, I wasn’t working at that council at that time, but I’ve been briefed on it in some detail over the years-but yes I am aware of it”.

“Now Administrators Zara and Brown made statements at this” month’s council meeting where they ruled out reductions or no increasing rates as “silly” and made it quite clear that their attitude was they thought those two ideas of a rate reduction or a zero rate rise were silly, not sensible etc. 

Does that show they predetermined ahead of likely calls for such actions in the section 223 process and by indicating in advance of that process their decision, are they not likely to have doing winki- pops issue over their heads?”

“I would say no because what they were talking about was their position on their proposed budget which they were voting on at that meeting. That’s my own view that they’re talking about, they’ve developed, they were at the point without making a decision on a proposed budget and it is their proposal that they are releasing to the community for feedback in my view because it’s a proposed budget they were entitled at that point in the process to take a position on it and in fact they were required at that very meeting to vote on it so I would say no, they until that point had an open mind but in making that decision that day they were required to form a view because they were voting on whether or not they accepted or wanted to release that budget as their proposed position so in my view”

“We have to disagree on that one. I think the motion was to release a document for consultation, so they were not meant to be debating it. Further, a zero-rate rise was not in the budget, they had a 2% figure in the budget there, and they were not debating the budget.

So what they were really doing is saying to people who were going to submit in the s223 process don’t bother submitting in that because we do not agree with you, we won’t let that happen anyway.”

“This is probably an item where we just have to agree to disagree, from my point of view when you’re talking about, we could talk it’s a separate conversation philosophically, about the consultation process, but in terms of winky pop my view is that they had already formed the view on a proposed budget and that’s why they were releasing that as a proposal so in my view no it’s not a relevant consideration in terms of winky pop specifically”

“We are talking about, and they mentioned the ratepayers and other people who had those opinions, so they weren’t talking about their own (opinions)”

Editor Comment: As a ratepayer, would you feel that the administrators would give your proposal a fair hearing if you suggested a rate reduction?