News

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:

Water Done Well is a government initiative which will allow Cross Council Entities (in our case New Plymouth, Stratford and South Taranaki combined) to “Borrow up to 500% of their operating revenue, almost double what they can borrow now” to upgrade water infrastructure.

In this story we met with a team at the South Taranaki District Council to find out their thoughts about this initiative.

(Click on the blue heading above to read the story.)

Households along the Spotswood end of Devon Street West got their letters this week to let them know cycleway “separators” will start being installed in early April. These are little concrete barriers to make sure cars don’t drive on to the cycleways.
(Click on the blue heading above to read the story).

Following on from the story about the Devon Street West "Cycleway Separators", there is an "instruction manual" video with the news item.
(Click on the blue heading above to find out more).

They are looking for Pulse Checkers.

"What are the Pulse Checkers?
Always on the pulse, our team of Pulse Checkers are who we reach out to when we need to get a view on our services, activities, or plans. They are our go-to group of ratepayers and residents when we want to understand what people think about what we do at NPDC. They do this by answering questionnaires, taking part in focus groups, or being interviewed."

Here’s your opportunity to tell them you don’t agree (click on the link below)

We posted recently that the Western Bay of Plenty Council has pulled out of LGNZ as have 6 other Councils in NZ in recent months.

We had been looking at this topic ourselves and whether it’s a good thing for New Plymouth to be a member of LGNZ.

Click on the blue heading above to find out more.

Western Bay of Plenty District Council is the latest council to leave national advocacy body Local Government New Zealand.

There were claims LGNZ had become “extremely political”, had swung “far left” and lacked professionalism.

Other councils that have left LGNZ include Christchurch City, Auckland, West Coast Regional, Grey, Kaipara and Westland District.

Watch this space as we have also been looking at LGNZ from a New Plymouth perspective and will have more information to share soon.

Click on the link to read more about Western Bay of Plenty.

The Taxpayers Union has been running a monthly poll over the last 2 years and have ranked the responses from all the regions about their Mayors and how well they are doing.

Our current Mayor Neil Holdom has not been rated very highly.

Click on this link to see the result:

An interesting Daily News item last week featuring Bryan Vickery and the remuneration of Councillors.

(Click on the blue heading above to read the story).

One of the comments made this week about the current debt at the NPDC suggested it would be interesting to compare the level of Debt in 2004 – when the PIF fund was created – with the level of debt now in 2024.

The comment suggested it would be good to compare Apples with Apples.

Click on the blue heading above to read how things have changed in the last 20 years.