We want to say 2 very big Thank You’s after our Water Company Draft SOE presentation to the NPDC

Yesterday we presented to the NPDC about a very important document. The Water Company Statement of Expectations (SOE) – the rules and focus of how this new company will operate.

We want to say 2 very big Thank You’s.

Firstly, we know it isn’t easy for our supporters to make it to an NPDC meeting because they are at work – and only a small team managed to get to the NPDC yesterday – but we so appreciate the support.

And secondly, we asked the Councillors and the Mayor to do something differently on behalf of the Ratepayers, Renters, Businesses, water consumers and all other affected people in the New Plymouth District – and they did. We really appreciate that our elected officials took on board what we covered in our presentation.

We spoke about the Relationships and Engagement Section of the Water Company SOE – Section 21 b – Relationships with the New Plymouth District Community – which has 2 very vague and weak statements for the public.

We asked the NPDC to replace this section with one of 3 options we obtained from a legal opinion with what is possible to consider for the entire New Plymouth District.

The 2 current clauses for the public which are weak and vague, are –

One says it will “have regard to the interest of the community” “ when it is able to”.

The other says “As far as possible” “make decisions, with the best interests of the New Plymouth district’s” “communities in mind”.

“when it is able to” and “as far as possible” – we called this out in yesterday’s meeting and said this is not okay.

We also spoke about how the general public in New Plymouth has become sidelined, ignored and forgotten about over many years – and we asked that this stops now – with this document.

What concerns us a lot is that we found this draft SOE document quite by accident when searching for details in a totally unrelated committee, not with the Water Company meetings.

We found the first draft in late March. We didn’t like what we saw at all – and we had a small amount of budget left from our legal fund for the Water Company Interim CEO case. We decided to use the last of these funds to get a legal opinion about what the law said could be done to protect the rights and needs of the New Plymouth District with the rules of this new Water Company.

We were presented with 3 options, and we presented this document to the elected officials at yesterday’s meeting. We have attached the legal opinion for those who would like to read it.

Yesterday we said we have a preference for section 21b to be replaced with the wording in Number 13, on page 3 of this legal opinion. We have attached this wording as just a single page – the last page attached above.

It was interesting that after our presentation two councillors were very concerned with when we knew about the Water Company SOE – and that we had had more than 5 day’s notice of the existence of this document.

We made the point this is why we would like to be a stakeholder with big decisions, because if we hadn’t found this document accidentally, then there is no way we could have obtained a legal opinion in 5 working days.

We don’t quite understand why these 2 councillors had issues with the community knowing about the existence of this very important document.

We were originally going to speak about the SOE on 30^th April – and the agenda for that meeting was for the elected officials to discuss the SOE – not make a decision that day.

The meeting was shifted to 6^th May – and we weren’t aware the discussion situation had changed to making a decision at yesterdays’ meeting. We found out after our presentation that a decision was planned that afternoon, and no one had yet read our legal opinion.

We are very grateful that copies were made and distributed, and a recess was built in later in the afternoon, for the opinion to be read.

The elected officials could have ignored this legal advice and carried on and made a decision to accept what was in yesterday’s draft SOE in the agenda – but they didn’t.

A motion was put forward to table our legal opinion – this doesn’t sound like a lot to an everyday person – but by tabling the document it has been accepted to be considered, and the elected officials want to obtain an opinion from their own lawyers about the validity of the opinion we have presented.

This doesn’t get a clause protecting everyone’s rights and needs in to the SOE – yet – but it has opened the door to make this possible. There was a willingness from all the officials at the meeting yesterday to explore what is possible for everyone in the New Plymouth District.

We are very grateful for that – and we are hoping that our preferred option for a replacement 12b section will be inserted in to the final SOE.

We will upload a video of the speech once it is available on the Council Website.

Please share this with others. Given options to look after their community, our elected officials responded favourably, at this first stage.

We will keep you posted when a decision is made.