MEDIA RELEASE

Council chairman irate about misinformation

20 April 2007 For immediate release:

Regional council chairman John Cronin is furious about the misinformation being spread by the Eastern Bay Regional Focus Group in their bid to overturn Environment Bay of Plenty’s proposal to move its head office to Tauranga.

“An advertisement taken by the focus group in a Tauranga newspaper states that the move will cost $23 million, an amount they claim that could be spent on other more pressing issues. This is grossly and utterly misleading and the members of the focus group know that,” Mr Cronin says. “We met twice with the group to ensure that they had the correct information and they are deliberately distorting the truth with this advertisement. We are happy to debate the issue around factual information but this is mischievous.”

Mr Cronin says that the regional council has gone to great lengths to provide full and accurate information to the public on the reasons, impacts and costs of the proposed move. The cost of moving will not be an extra $23million, he said. “The difference between moving or not in terms of capital expenditure over the next ten years is minimal and will amount to about a 1% rates increase after 2012 / 2013. While the proposal involves capital expenditure of $23m, the real issue is the amount of this that is not covered by the sale of equivalent capital assets or is additional expenditure above what the community already knew we were proposing.

“The Focus Group has made the huge mistake of assuming that switching out of one set of assets (land and buildings) into another set of assets (land and buildings) is a cost to ratepayers. It is not! It is like a house owner moving from one house to another. The cost of moving is not the cost of an additional house. We have accurately assessed the total cost of our total proposal at $23m made up of $15.5m for a new head office in Tauranga, $3.9m for a new building in Whakatane, $1.5m for relocation and $2m for staff redundancies. Whether we move our head office or not we do know however that we do need to increase our staff resources in the western Bay of Plenty.

“We need more office space in Tauranga for our expanding functions and changing priorities so we have to spend some money there and we flagged that to the community in our ten year plan in 2006. We proposed borrowing $10.8m for a new office space. If this move does not go ahead we will still be developing a larger office in Tauranga and this will be part of the costs of our proposal.

A new office building in Whakatane costing around $3.9m would be necessary if we decide to move as we would not require the current head office and would look to sell this. Valuers have estimated that we would realise about $9.2m and this would help offset the expenditure. Important work such as roading and harbour projects are all going ahead as planned.

There are enough people in the focus group with an understanding of finance and economics to know that they have manipulated the figures to suit their argument. In our proposal which is freely available from our offices and through our website, we set out all the figures so that people can see the proposed expenditure and the proposed funding mechanisms.”

Mr Cronin questions whether the focus group is really suggesting that Environment Bay of Plenty should sell its Whakatane land and buildings to help fix roading issues in Tauranga or that we use borrowing approved for a Tauranga building for another purpose.

Mr Cronin says that there will only a small effect on ratepayers above what was included in the ten year plan and this too is clearly set out on page 51 of the proposal documents. He says that the councillors will listen to sound, rational cases being put for or against the proposal but would not be persuaded by submissions based on misleading information.

ENDS

© Scoop Media