We had a good turnout with T-Shirts at the Procurement Strategy meeting last week and a little bit of controversy.

Thanks to everyone who came to the T-Shirt Tuesday meeting on 5^th August. We had a really good turnout.

The day wasn’t without some controversy – but the topic was also very important. A speech from the Alliance to the Elected officials about the new Procurement Strategy they were voting on that day.

It’s a serious issue – and Procurement is a very serious cost for any Council. Instead of simplifying how things are done – the new Strategy ads layers of complications.

Kevin’s speech is attached.

After the speech things got a bit off track.

Outgoing Mayor Holdom questioned what allegiances the Alliance group has. Holdom felt the need to call the NP Ratepayers Alliance an activist group.

It is so sad in NZ today that when groups of people decide to tell officials they don’t like what they are doing on your behalf – all of a sudden they feel the need to tell everyone you are an activist.

Kevin did remind Neil Holdom the supporters of the Alliance are Ratepayers and Renters who pay the wages of all the people at the Council – so the Ratepayers and Renters who now voice an opinion - and complain - are to be called activists.

The Facebook views of our “Activist” group has grown by 30% in the last month and visitors to our website have increased four-fold. Each time someone official says publicly they don’t like what we are doing to try to reduce rates - new people come to have a look and see what we are up to.

At the end of the Procurement section of the meeting, Councillor Chong made a comment that he did not approve of the new Procurement Strategy as it was racist. David Bublitz decided to defend this comment by reading 3 lines on a page – which didn’t apply to just one group of the community - and ignore the words on the rest of the same page which referred to just the one group of the community.

The link to the Strategy document is here – so people can make up their own minds:

https://www.npdc.govt.nz/media/izjgcleb/ecm-9528959-strategy-and-operations-committee-agenda-8-july-2025.pdf

The document starts on Page 338 – the first 8 to ten pages give you an overview.

We did get called out by the Council to remind our supporters there is a standard of behaviour at Council meetings regarding bad language and interruptions not being appropriate.

We know it is hard for people to remain quiet when their own personal situation is badly affected by decisions being made by some of the officials at these meetings.

But we know we can’t influence decisions being made if we don’t approach these meetings in a polite way. We would not want any of our supporters to be banned from attending meetings due to bad language or behaviour.