Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

The battle continues

As long-time readers will know, I've been battling the bureaucracy and idiocy of my local council (The South Waikato District Council) for many years now.

Last week a few more salvos were exchanged but it seems they just never learn.

I'll quickly bring new readers up to date on the backstory to provide context.

I moved to the South Waikato town of Tokoroa back in 2003 and had nothing but praise for the council in those days.

Within hours of my arrival, the Economic Development Manager of the council back then had contacted me (he was a regular Aardvark reader) and connected me with a bunch of useful contacts, a place to set up my workshop and some (for the era) high-speed wireless internet.

Things were all wine and roses.

The council itself was seemingly focused on doing the right thing and doing it well by delivering core services and operating in an honest and ethical manner.

Ah... those were the days!

Unfortunately, since then, the SWDC has seen a steep decline in its honesty, its ethics, its efficiency and performance.

A series of "less than stellar" CEOs combined with Mayors that, in my honest opinion, were more focused on what was best for themselves rather than on what was best for the district, lead the perilously steep spiral into the situation we find today.

During the last decade and a half I've fought numerous battles with this bloated bureaucracy and they've gone out of their way to deliver "utu" every time I've bested them.

On almost every occasion, they've put the interests of the community second to their own pride, hubris and arrogance.

For example, despite the fact that I have worked hard to very succesfully promote the local airfield as a destination for tourists from all over the world -- they have effectively shut down my activities there. The result is that instead of a steady flow of people adding Tokoroa to their intinerary when visiting New Zealand, they drive right by, depriving local motels, restaurants, cafes and other businesses of the economic benefits of their spend.

Despite me bringing a number of quite large businesses to their door, all looking at potentially setting up operations at that airfield and investing heavily in creating jobs and prosperity -- they've either ignored those companies or simply sent them away with a flea in their ear -- again costing the local economy dearly.

During the reign of the latest mayor and CE, they rolled out what has effectively become a total ban on my flying activities at the airfield. Special rules that apply only to me and nobody else.

Unfortunately, they're just too stupid to realise that the devil makes work for idle hands so, now having far more time available to me, I spend a lot more of that time digging into the dishonesty and bad decisions that they're making whilst showcasing it to the world.

Of course being the dullards they are, even their attempts to stop me doing that have backfired enormously. For example, trying to stop me from filming council meetings and even calling the police to try and have me ejected for simply attending one of those meetings has left them with egg all over their face after my video on those events scored nearly quarter of a million views on YouTube.

And just last week they further exercised their "stupid-muscle" in a way that has also backfired.

What happened?

Well the local gokart club asked me if I could attend their meeting on Sunday and make a video they could use to promote an upcoming racing series.

I've advertised the fact that I'm more than happy to support local clubs and community groups by doing this and I'll do it totally free. Using my cameras and drones I can get some pretty good footage and edit it up into long-form and short-form content they can use on social media or wherever.

I accepted the invitation.

They asked it was legal for me to do this and I said that, since the gokart track is next to the airfield, I'd make sure I was fully compliant with all the relevant CAA regulations.

Since the kart club leases their land from the council they asked that I also get sign-off from the SWDC. I can understand that, I'm sure they've also had issues dealing with this council and would not want to get into trouble with them.

So I emailed the council to advise them that I would be flying my drone to make a video for the kart club and assuring them that all CAA conditions would be met.

I heard nothing back so figured -- no problems. Perhaps the council had actually grown a little bit of a brain and would not penalise a community group just in order to exercise their "utu policy" in respect to me.

Oh dear, I was wrong.

Obviously they thought they'd be clever this time. To say "no" would be viewed by the community as really bad faith on the part of the council so they didn't want to do that. Instead they did what they often do in such cases where I'm concerned... they said yes in a way that really meant no.

The kart meeting was on Sunday and at 4:52 on Friday afternoon I finally got a response from the SWDC. They said (I paraphrase) sure, no problem, all you have to do is fill out this form, privide this information, get agreement from certain third parties and deliver confirmation from the kart club before 1700 -- then we'll consider your application.

Yeah, that's right... they left eight minutes for me to contact the kart club, the person that was going to spot for me and organise forms to be filled out and signed then get those forms back to the council offices in time for them to consider the application before they all went home for the weekend.

Can you see what they did there?

Call me a cynic -- but is that not an arsehole move on their part?

Now if it was up to me I'd just have gone ahead and flown -- as I have done for the past couple of years. You see it's my belief that when an authority makes compliance impossible then there is no longer any obligation to even try and comply. I've been flying what I want, when I want, wherever I want for all that time, always making sure that I do so with 100 percent safety in mind.

The great thing you can rely on when it comes to council bureaucracies is that the only thing more powerful than their willingness to abuse their power is their laziness so nobody says a thing -- perhaps to the stupor induced by all that coffee and all those biscuits paid for by the ratepayers.

However, I couldn't drop the kart club in a hole by possibly getting them off-side with council so the filming was cancelled.

Nice work South Waikato District Council, disadvantaging a community group just so you can exercise your agenda against me.

Of course this left me with an entire free weekend so I decided to make a different video. This was a video about the excesses of our wonderful council. (remember those idle hands).

After totally wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on spectacular public toilets that don't work right in the front of town, the SWDC came out a few months ago and said they were going have new toilets installed at a cost of $600,000.

Well I spent some time researching the cost of such things and discovered that they could have had the work done for a tiny fraction of that amount.

The SWDC's project is costing ratepayers $600K for five prefab public toilet cubicals. If we set aside $100K for the concrete pad and the pipe to the sewer mains, that's about $100K per potty.

Just look at this option from a Kiwi company that could have done the job for $4,500 per bowl.

The community is now asking "where the hell is the other $95K per toilet actually going?"

I also included a clip of the district's mayor Gary Petley announcing that the SWDC had "partnered" with the company building the toilets. WTF does "partnered" mean and does that explain why we're paying 20 times as much as we should have? What kind of deals are being done here and who really benefits?

What's more, I pointed out that this is yet another of their ill-fated projects that is conforming to their own low standards by already taking three times longer than the scheduled five days for installation. I've previously pointed out that almost all their projects go over-time, over budget and fail to deliver on the promises -- this is just the latest in that long line of cock-ups.

That video is on my Facebook page and has already caused significant ripples within a community that is facing huge rate increases from a council that also plans to borrow over $120m over the next 10 years.

And to think... I'd much rather have been creating a positive video for a local community group which would have meant I'd have been far too busy to dig deeper into the foul mess that is this council's mismanagement and incompetence.

In fact, if the SWDC had just left me to continue my flying and business activities at the airfield, we'd have all the benefits of a steady flow of tourists, and they wouldn't have me breathing down their neck whilst holding their feet to the flames at every turn.

Unfortunately for them... they're just too stupid to realise this and I doubt they ever will.

Carpe Diem folks!

Please visit the sponsor!

Here is a PERMANENT link to this column

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font