DCC Plans More Big Rates Rises

The ODT reports that the Dunedin City Council is planning more big rates rises. After suffering large increases over the last two years, ratepayers face paying 8.7% more next year, and then 10.5% and 7.2% in following years.
And next year, less of the budget debate will be in public, with the usual three-day hearings cut to one day and secret "workshops" held instead. With local-body elections scheduled for next year, councillors are sensitive about publicly exposing their free-spending ways.
A team of senior Council staff has been looking at ways of trimming costs, but their efforts seem to have resulted in only minor savings. No fat has been trimmed from the bloated bureaucracy, but turkeys are never going to vote for an early Christmas.
It was claimed that councillors also needed to be aware of ratepayers on fixed incomes:

There is some concern about their ability to pay. The council is mindful of that.

It has hard to see any concern for ratepayers ability to pay in the Council's past or planned rates increases.
Council chief executive, Jim Harland, said that "The council isn't broke". Standard & Poor's has recently confirmed the council's AA- rating, saying that the Council

benefited from minimum legal limitations in regard to increasing its property taxes

i.e. the Council can raise rates any time it pleases, which is exactly what it is doing!

No Worry From Sea Level Rise

Despite the scare-mongering headline, the details of this ODT story indicate that Dunedin does not have too much to worry about from sea-level rise. The best news is that tidal-gauge data, from the Harbour Basin, is rising at just 1.3 mm a year, which is a continuation of the long-term trend. This shows that increasing carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere has not accelerated sea-level rise. (News reports of inundation of islands such as Tuvalu, neglect to mention that their land is sinking).
But even most extreme predictions of a 1.5 metre rise by 2100, would affect only a relatively small area of land, mostly around the Upper Harbour. The latest predictions of the IPCC only predict a rise of 0.6 metres which would affect an even smaller area.
Anyway, the theory of catastrophic global-warming is looking increasingly doubtful as the predicted increasing temperature has come to a halt, and there has been no rise since 1998. The Climategate leak shows that scientists have had to resort to dubious selection and manipulation of data to try and make it fit the theory. Time will tell who is right in this controversy.

Cairns Doesn't Want Campaigning

Otago Regional Council chairman, doesn't want "premature" campaigning for next year's local body elections. In effect, what he is saying is that councillors shouldn't consider the views of the ratepayers who elect them. He said he didn't want "trivialising distractions" from major issues facing the Council.
The major issue facing residents is the massive increase in rates over recent years, partly due to levies for the new Stadium. The Council is under further financial pressure due to the new Regional Council headquarters fiasco, the Leith flood protection scheme cost blowout, and overly-ambitious changes to bus services.
I am sure that ratepayers would welcome any councillor who looked for their support in next year's election by challanging the current culture of reckless spending in the Council.

Greater Dunedin For Financial Responsibility

The three councillors who were elected to the Dunedin City Council under the Greater Dunedin Banner, Dave Cull, Kate Wilson and Chris Staynes, are looking for candidates to join them for next year's election.
Dave Cull said that the council needed to be "much more transparent and financially responsible". I am sure that this will strike a chord with many voters, as the current Council could be described as financially reckless.
Greater Dunedin need to get enough councillors elected to form a majority on the Council, for there to be a change of direction.

Honeymoon Over For Chinese Garden

After a busy period when the Chinese Garden was first opened, visitor numbers are now well down. This was probably to be expected as Dunedin residents initially went to see what it was like, and now the hard reality is setting in. The hope of this Garden paying it's way is well gone, and ratepayers will have to pickup the tab.
Maybe those who said that the Chinese Garden would be a White Elephant, are right.

Merry Christmas, Ratepayers

By Christmas, the Council should have given an indication of how big next year's rate's increase will be. I predict that it will be over 10%: the third year in a row with a big increase.
Hat Tip: Patricia McCarty

DCC Venture Capital Fund?

Last week's "The Independent' magazine has a story (not on-line), reporting that the Dunedin City Council and local business incubator, Upstart, are co- funding study to look at establishing a "side-car" investment fund for investors. This fund would co-invest with Upstart's Angel investors, who are used to analysing startup companies.
Upstart chief executive, Norman Evans, is quoted as saying:

Anything that stops people putting their money into bad investments by spreading their risk is a good idea

Evans tells of a local farmer who had invested $1,000,000 in a local IT company:

I thought, "poor guy, he’s just blown a million bucks in a sector he knows nothing about trying to do the right thing to help a young company get going". There should be a place for people like this to invest

Such a venture capital fund is not a bad idea. I would consider investing in it myself. But I would be interested in knowing the performance of the investments that the Upstart Angels have made so far.
And wasn't the farmers unfortunate investment very like the investment of the Dunedin City Council in "The Street" where $700,000 was lost. Norman Evans was on the board of "The Street".