One year ago, on 31st October 2025, our current Mayor and Councillors were sworn in after the election. We’ve had a look at what we’ve worked on with the NPDC since then.

On 31^st October 2025 our current Mayor and Councillors were sworn in after the election. They have been on board now for one whole year. One third of the way through their term.

There has been a different attitude to spending and debt in the last year, which was so badly needed. At a recent meeting to progress the 2027 Long Term Plan the presentation documents clearly stated ratepayers have made it clear rates must be kept down.

We’ve been saying we’ve been a lot busier than we thought we’d be after the election, so we thought we’d look back at what we’ve been doing, and how we have been working with the new team of elected officials, over the last year.

It’s quite a long list of the things we’ve been up to:

• The investigation into the Water Company Interim CEO appointment and LGOIMA’s with questions for the (now) ex NPDC CEO.
• Complaint to the Ombudsman with the Water Company set up LGOIMA’s being mostly unanswered and with no information attached.
• 42 days – plus a 3 week Xmas Closedown – later, we finally received 300 pages from the Water Company set up LGOIMA questions.
• We engaged a law firm in Wellington to help with this investigation.
• Twice we have asked our supporters for donations to help with our legal fund, and we have had a lot of support with this.
• We put out a campaign with information and a timeline to educate the community about what happened with the Water Company appointment.
• We sent questions to Gareth Green from the information we received after the Ombudsman’s involvement. 4 days later he resigned from the NPDC and took on a role in the Mayor’s Office at Tauranga City Council.
• Beca on Beca’s cycleway audit report came out. Beca audited themselves for their own design. We wrote to the NPDC asking for an independent audit to be done. An Auckland company was engaged and they raised several key concerns, including unsafe parts of the Devon St West road design.
• We met with Mayor Max and Sarah Downs to ask if we could create an NPDC Ratepayer’s forum with the Alliance. We asked for a situation where we could meet with staff to raise concerns and ask questions, in meetings and between meetings. Our NPDC Quarterly Management meetings started in March 2026.
• We asked for open text boxes in consultation documents so people can type whatever they want to put. This is now standard in most sections of consultations.
• We know it was on the newly elected officials’ radar as well, but we asked for a shorter length for agendas for meetings, and a better layout to find information before, and after, meetings. Changes were made in December 2025 and links to documents were added in early 2026 and mostly it was fairly easy to find information. It was easy to see what dates were coming up for future meetings, and what meetings we needed to attend.
• Sadly, in October 2026 the meetings pages on the NPDC website have been totally overhauled. Finding information is much harder, and a lot of information is missing. There is a lot of guess work of what information may be where – and we dread the thought of going back in a year to find information from a meeting. We’ll give it a bit of time for teething issues with the new system, but it is looking like we may need to revisit meetings and agenda’s again.
• Multiple injuries were happening on the Devon Street West cycleway but they were not all being recorded by the NPDC, or even being reported to the NPDC. We ran 4 months of reporting with serious injuries and hospitalisations. Sadly, the only answer to this situation was to do a trial on a very safe part of the cycleway with a new type of plastic divider, rather than concrete ones.
• The first Public Engagement meeting we attended uncovered that a previous budget for a non Fluoride Water supply for New Plymouth had been spent on other operational activity. Only $300 of an over $300k budget was actually spent on this project. A commitment has been made to attempt to provide a non fluoride water supply outlet in the next Long Term Plan.
• We found a Water Company Statement of Expectations (SOE) document in the Maori Committee meeting agenda quite by accident in March. This is a legally binding document of how the community will be treated by the new Water Company. It was very vague with little protection for ratepayers or water consumers. We obtained a legal opinion about what clauses could be included, presented this at a Council meeting and a new clause was added with how the community will be included.
• At the end of our SOE presentation to the council meeting, Te Waka McLeod, David Bublitz, Sam Bennett and Dinnie Moeahu grilled us about how we knew about the SOE document so far in advance. They were extremely concerned our group – who look out for ratepayers’ interests – knew about a draft legally binding document which affected ratepayers – so far in advance. Our concern was that the draft document wasn’t available in a Water Company meeting, or in an NPDC meeting, and instead was buried in a Maori Committee meeting and the community had no idea it was being worked on. We were pleased these four councillors did support and vote for the changes we asked for when it came time to vote.
• We were having issues with the agendas for the Water Company meetings around this time. We asked for these to be changed to reflect more information and within a week they had more of an NPDC format and a lot more information.
• Our education campaign, timeline, poll and petition continued about the Interim CEO position for the Water Company and the communities’ thoughts on the suitability of a person for the Permanent CEO position. We presented the petition and poll findings to the NPDC.
• We got involved with the families affected by the Connexa Cellphone Towers in Spotswood and Glen Avon, with massive towers to be built on the berms in front of their homes. We were asked to join a meeting with the families, the Mayor, David MacLeod (local MP) and 2 managers from Connexa. Sadly, NZ law changed to join an International United Nations agreement on cellphone towers and neither of these towers could be stopped. One tower has moved away from the front door to around the side of the house, but that is all that could be changed with the current law. We understand David Macleod has said he will work with other MP’s (if he is voted back in November) to try to get this law changed in the next term.
• The Mayor, Cr Vosseler, Cr Chard and Cr Moeahu all assisted the families affected by these towers where they could (which was very limited), and they were also supportive with us in our attempts to advocate.
• The NPDC voted to exit from the United Nations Global Covenant of Mayors, that we had discovered Neil Holdom had signed the city up for.
• Our quarterly meetings have continued through to September talking mostly about reducing rates and debt – and writing stories about that.
• We raised concerns about the 25 person Citizens Panel that would be used to develop the “communities” needs for the Bell Block Spatial Plan and identified one of the facilitators was connected to an active transport plan that had been designed for the centre of town for New Plymouth. This offered a somewhat biased approach to leading a small group of people to decision making on behalf of thousands of people who live in Bell Block.
• We went to our first ever Stakeholder workshop which was with the the Bell Block Spatial Plan. We wrote to the Mayor and Interim CEO of the NPDC the following day. We found “buried” documents on pages 75 to 78 on the NPDC website with NZTA pictures of carless streets and sub-division guidelines the community has not being made aware of. We also found ourselves ranking a whole lot of ideas at the end of the workshop which did not come from, or include, our own ideas from the night.
• The community came full circle from October 2025 when the Alliance were the first to announce Neil Holdom had not been successful in the appointment for the Water Company Permanent CEO position.
• In our December 2025 meeting with Mayor Max and Sarah Downs we asked to be given a Stakeholder status on behalf of ratepayers – in the same way Federated Farmers, Age Concern or the Chamber of Commerce have that status for the groups they represent. We managed to upset John Woodward on Facebook stating that we had a stakeholder status with the NPDC. He was not supportive of that concept. So, we followed up and asked for this to be formalised. We have since seen involvement, and knowledge in advance, for the Climate Change consultation (a workshop for our supporters), and the NPDC and Water Company significance and engagement policies (legally binding documents we have known about well in advance). A public meeting was put on for these at the NPDC and a number of our supporters attended.
• After the large rates increases in July this year we met Mayor Max, Moira George and the GM of NPDC Finance with 27 ratepayers who had received rates increases between 10% and 42% - not the 4.9% average rates increase people had been expecting. Sadly, there was always going to be around 10,000 people with very large rates increases and only one of our people who had the offer for their rates to be checked by the NPDC Finance team had an issue that could bring their rates down. We found that the expectation of a 4.9% average rates increase was more of a communications issue.
• This rates increase meeting did cover how rates are set and why some people are paying more than others in different suburbs across the city. We put a story out with the breakdown of this system. We understand a number of the new Councillors and the Mayor are wanting to do a review of the rating system in the 2025 to 2028 term. We are sincerely hoping this will happen before rates come out next year.
• At this rates increase meeting we asked if we could put forward a communications proposal with a view of improving communication with ratepayers. We asked our supporters for feedback to build into the proposal and we sent this to Mayor Max, Deputy Moira George and the new CEO Kelvin Wright a few weeks ago. We will update with what feedback and ideas are of value when we hear back.
• Now and again we write to either The Mayor and the NPDC CEO, or the Mayor and Councillors, with questions and concerns. We also find before and after Council meetings the newly elected people are quite approachable. This has been a very refreshing change for our team.
• We have been closely following the 2027 Long Term Plan preparation work, and covering project costs and debt through our NPDC Quarterly Management meetings. There is a lot of work being done and a number of issues being raised, which we will update on soon.

In the next year, the biggest issue for ratepayers and renters in New Plymouth is the Long Term Plan. As we remind people, this is the document which gives the NPDC permission to spend your money.

We will be bringing people up to speed with the many issues facing the NPDC with trying to keep rates down, and we will be trying to get as many people as possible having a say about the decisions being made. We are also working in the background with the process, so people can actually give the feedback they want to give in the LTP consultation.

We’d like to finish with a really big thank you to our supporters and the continued growth with support we are seeing.

We have the Facebook page, with around 9,500 thousand people coming through the page each month, and 2,300 people following us. We often have more than 20,000 views of our bigger stories, and a lot of people also share our bigger stories.

We have over 600 people who receive our e-mail newsletters and we have around 5,500 unique visitors to our website each month.

This gives us a total regular support group of around 15,500 people, which we so appreciate. 

We will continue in to next year with our aim…..

We want ratepayers and residents to be listened to. 

We are here to educate and inform, and to encourage local people affected by Council decisions to get involved, so we can all bring about change.

One person can't change the Council, but a Big Team of Voices can.

Thank you for being a part of that Big Team of Voices.

If you think other people may be interested in what we are doing please share what we have been up to.