News

We were so pleased to see yesterday’s story in the Post, with the submissions received for the Local Water Done Well Consultation across Taranaki.

The majority of people in Stratford and South Taranaki said - No to a CCO - for the new Local Water Done Well company structure.

Click on the blue heading above to read the story.

If you are running for a seat around the Council table to represent your community, surely you need to listen to what your community has to say. Otherwise how will you represent their needs ?

Click on the blue heading above to read this story.

Have you been watching and listening to the state of what is happening with our Local Council - the NPDC.

Have you been following the issues, and the big numbers for budgets and debt, being tossed around carelessly by some of the current elected officials ?

Click on the blue heading above to read more.

So many of our supporters told us it is such a waste of time putting in a submission because the NPDC has already decided what they will be doing, and sadly we thought you were probably right.

We've received a lot of information about the submissions, and we are clarifying some of the detail. When we know we have the full set of results we will also analyse the data and see what we think the results are.

But we found something very concerning with the information we have been sent so far. Something along the lines of what our supporters were already telling us.

Click on the blue heading above to read the story.

If you are planning to do a submission, but haven't had a chance to yet, you only have a couple of days left.

• Earlier in the month we had suggested
• Taranaki Say No to a Water CCO
• We still stand by that after further investigations and attending the public meetings.

Click on the blue heading above to find more about doing a quick submision.

We had a Roving Reporter cover this a few weeks ago and it is plainly obvious from comments we are receiving, and comments in this Daily News story, these new parking meters are not easy to use.

Click on the blue heading above to see more.

Our Roving Reporter went to the Climate Adaptation Workshop at the NPDC on 20th May. Just to follow along with what next steps happen at the Council now the consultation has closed. We will give you an update later - but something very surprising happened while our Roving Reporter was observing the meeting.

Click on the blue heading above to read more.

This consultation proposes a new joint Council Controlled Organisation (WSCCO) with the NPDC, Stratford and Hawera which will affect consumers receiving drinking water and wastewater services from these 3 councils.

Click on the blue heading above to find out why you need to know more.

The Waitara Walkway Extension is another very expensive nice to have project the NPDC is working on and the risks associated with this project NOT being successful are highlighted in The Post’s story from a recent Strategic Projects Committee meeting (click on the link below).

We keep saying at the Alliance – with the current cost of living crisis many New Plymouth people are still living with – and with the large increases in rates – 9.9% is still more than 3 times the rate of inflation – these nice to have projects MUST be put on hold.

And projects that have recognised risks RIGHT NOW – we say the Council MUST take a cautious approach – mothball the concept – and make sure there will not be budget blowouts with yet another NPDC project.

The CEO, Gareth Green, has written back to tell us there are 2 meetings planned.

We had searched the NPDC events calendar, and the NPDC meetings section on their website and no mention had been made of meetings for Local Water Done Well.

We are so pleased we asked when they would be - so we didn’t miss out.

The 2 sessions are attached (see the picture to the right). Lunch time on a Wednesday, or after work at 5.30pm on a Thursday.

Please mark your diaries to make sure you have a chance to attend, to ask lots of questions, and to have a chance to tell your Council what you think with this consultation.

Stratford District Council seems to understand that concept with Local Water Done Well. We congratulate them on that.

Meetings and questions are welcome in Stratford - not so in New Plymouth.

Click on the blue heading above to see the difference between Stratford and New Plymouth.

We've attached a link to the Groundswell Website.

New Plymouth have a consultation open at the moment for Climate Change Adaptation. Gareth Green, the NPDC CEO, tells the Alliance this consultation is directly related to the NZ Government Legislation due to the Paris Agreement.

Groundswell represent the farmers, food producers and exporters all over NZ. They have been asking some serious questions of our governments over a number of years.

They are asking some serious questions about the Paris Agreement when some really big nations are pulling out of the Paris Agreement.

David Seymour and Winston Peters are also asking questions.

Click here to have a read and see what you think.

The Taxpayers Union is asking the PM and Minster for Local Government - Simon Watts - to introduce Rates Capping for Local Councils.

Click on the link below to have your say.

Over 10,000 emails have been sent so far.

We thought we’d look into that, and we didn’t like what we found – AT ALL.

We hope this story is a catalyst where many, many, Ratepayers and Renters tell the NPDC you do not want them taking on more debt.

Click on the blue heading above to read the story.

This is a story about the 5 options that can be used when Local Councils adopt the Government Water Done Well initiative.

Our Mayors and CEO’s across Taranaki are only presenting 3 options to us.

Click on the blue heading above to read the full story.

The first reply to our questions didn't have a lot of detail.

We wrote back to ask for detail and we now know what the 9 badges are, and what has been completed and planned with these badges.

Click on the blue heading above to read the story.

Late in February there were a lot of very surprised people in New Plymouth when the NPDC proudly reported the Airport Company (PRIP) had built a Lookout Building.

People were very surprised because they had no idea NPDC was spending money on this Lookout and, also surprised because a Lookout over the sea isn’t really what people would call core business for the Airport.

Click on the blue heading above to read the story.

We wrote to the Mayor and the NPDC on Sunday 13th April, so their inboxes on Monday morning would have our concerns about the Global Covenant of Mayors.

On Tuesday 15th April the NPDC Your Say page has an update for the Climate Adaptation Plan ready for our feedback.

Perhaps that was happening anyway ? What an extremely uncanny situation.

Click on the blue heading above to read more.

We came across New Plymouth with the Global Covenant of Mayors sort of accidentally. We see there were a few short news items about the GCoM back in 2019, but it is a group we didn’t know about as the Alliance until fairly recently.
We suspect many other ratepayers and renters in New Plymouth will be the same.

Click on the blue heading above to read about this global group of Mayors.

We have been working on a series of stories which cover some serious topics for the community of New Plymouth to be aware of.

The first of these stories is coming out today.

We are not sharing this information to upset people, or to be negative, or make people angry. We want to channel those reactions into positive action.

We are bringing you this information because it is so important for the majority of people who live in New Plymouth to be aware things are happening behind the scenes with our Councils and Central Government that we are not aware of.

Once we are aware, we need to help others to become aware so we can -

• ALL VOTE FOR CHANGE this year and
• LOTS OF PEOPLE vote for that change

As you read through the stories coming out, we ask you to help us with our “Power of Three” Campaign (Photo to the right).

Thank you for all of the support we have had. It is so appreciated.

We’ve had a few people make contact about the new parking meters and some people are having difficulty using them.

There are folks that do not have a mobile phone, or if they do, they don’t use apps on their phones. Some people just prefer to use cash.

We have had a couple of stories of people heading in to town to support a local business for a meal, or a sale, and they have not been able to find a parking meter they were able to use, so they have had to drive away and not spend money where they had intended to shop.

Businesses are finding it tough enough without the NPDC putting road blocks with parking the car in the way.

We hadn’t seen this promoted, but there is a map of all the NPDC parking meters which shows which ones take cash, as well as the older card only ones and the new touch and go ones.

Hopefully this will help out more businesses so all consumers have a place they can put the car while they go shopping.

This is the link to the map: