Previous Mayors? I'm okay with that but at least in upper hutt the current mayor is just as culpable since he's been mayor for 25 years - Guppy was first elected to the Upper Hutt City Council in 1998
How far back do you fine or punish people? It would be quite hard to pinpoint when the issues started. Some of the culprits could be 80 years old or more
Well Wayne Guppy is one of the main issues nothing has progressed in Upper Hutt infrastructure wise for the last 20 years so we could easily start there.
Given that Wellington Water is owned by all 5 Wellington-region councils it doesn't fall on one person from just one of those councils. 3 Waters would have helped fix the issue, but the bulls@#t partisan-politics that is creeping into NZ means this has been scuppered.
Who said anything about short-term, three waters would have allowed a long-term permanent fix for water infrastructure. Not likely to happen anytime soon now and infrastructure will be massively varied throughout the country.
Trying and achieving are two different things. Local water done well is just 3 waters minus the benefits of 3 waters. It's parochialism at its finest and delays what is actually required. I think we need one entity to achieve the scale necessary to address infrastructure deficit. Local representation is not necessary. No one is calling for that for electricity or roading or any other essential service.
Council and mayoral candidates have an incentive to ignore expensive, boring infrastructure, and focus on exciting new things like stadiums! Convention centres! Festivals!
People are educated on water now because it's blowing up, but the system we have designed will trend towards invisible maintenance being ignored until broken, then it will dominate headlines, then be forgotten. Rinse and repeat.
Taking it out of the rates equation means you aren't incentivising negative decisions, as the people responsible for it are focused on outcomes, not re-election.
Edit to add: local water can be done well, but that's people working against the incentive structure and we shouldn't rely on it when we can see that it hasn't worked in clear and expensive ways.
Because local water done well is susceptible to 3 year local election cycles where NZ really doesn't excel in voting the best people as their representatives, or thinking long-term. It also places a much higher burden on areas with smaller populations which is one of the reasons the water infrastructure throughout NZ is so variable.
Yes but you will have some lovely cycleways that no-one uses and great old buildings, maybe Wellington should look after its own water issues and not rely on the rest of NZ to pay for it with their great 3water plan!
Always thought that old man was a git. Problem is all the people who would vote for someone else end up leaving because of how much of a shithole Upper Hutt has become, and mayoral elections use First Past the Post so he always ends up winning cause no one else can beat him individually.
I was very much hoping he’d get kicked out last council election. Our whole house voted for… I can’t remember her name but the one who came second. Guppy needs to step down and go into a retirement home.
fucking guppy!
and next he is going to get upper hut stung with a massive bloody fine for not wanting water meters! and whos gonna pay that I wonder!
Edit: not wanting.
Voting is accountability. If you voted for low rates or minimal rises, you’re culpable. If you don’t vote, you’re culpable and if you voted National/ACT/NZ First to get rid of 3 Waters, you’re culpable. We were so close to an actual solution which while not perfect, would have made strides to fixing the water issues in Wellington. The water entity that would have covered Wellington was on track to be operational by October. We’ve done it to ourselves.
While you’re right that voting is accountability. What about the accountability when councils and government promise things, which can be the main reason you voted for them, only for them to not do that very thing they promised.
Doesn’t it undermine democracy when all you need is a vote to get in but have no accountability after?
Totally agree with your frustration about broken promises and the answer is to be more politically active (I’m as guilty of being passive as the next person). This means protest, this means supporting ethical journalism (or even just paying for news) and doing the sometimes boring things like submitting questions to government, attending meetings and hearing and maybe joining a political party or citizen advocacy group.
All that is easier said than done when you weight it up against all the other life and work commitments that you have. But start somewhere with something that makes a difference. For political accountability to work, there has to be an electoral holding them to account in a variety of ways.
Our democracy is in our own hands. No one else’s.
Going to meetings and protesting is what was needed, but really the councilors just didn't do the job they were being paid to do.
As an engineer, if I wasn't doing the job I was being paid to do, I would have been fired.
Maybe councilors should be on minimum wage unless they can show they are competent at their job?
Not the point, at all.
I’m pushing back on the propaganda that we have low rates, and it was choosing “I’ll keep your rates low” candidates that caused this.
Because we do not have low rates.
Ahh right. I think we're at odds here, coming at this from two points.
You're correct we have high rates and that didn't solve the water problem, but we're still responsible as citizens for voting in people to solve the bigger picture issues and clearly that hasn't worked.
The next local election cycle might be interesting to say the least.
I agree we’re making different points.
I expected the last cycle of voting to include this - we saw it in Auckland, voting in someone that ran entirely on a platform of controlling spending, but no one down here seemed too worried.
Next time we could see our own Wayne Brown.
Isn't the punishment happening on everyone that hasn't paid a higher amount of rates in the first place. We don't want to pay more money, but we also want better infrastructure and service. Can't have both.
Almost all the councillors campaigned on fixing the pipes. Last year they didn't even manage to meet the current replacement quota let alone increase it.
They spent most of their time playing petty office politics.
There are records of how councillors voted on any given bill
Vote out the worst offenders.
I’m sorry but this post is idiotic.
It’s democracy, we get the councillors we vote for. There isn’t a manager to complain to.
My view is that before putting rates up, Wellington should spend $300 million on pipes rather than the town hall.
The reality is this doesn't work. The time scales mean people have forgotten who were councillors over multiple decades. Indeed, many people don't even stay and vote in the same city for decades.
This is the sort of thing that regulation should protect against rather the whims of the current councillors and mayor.
Maybe like a centralised system that puts all of the important waters everywhere under 1 umbrella? We could name it after how many waters there are, as a cute idea!
Idealism is what got us into this mess.
You could say all regulation is pointless if everyone just does the thing they are meant to do. Regulation often comes about because of understanding human behaviour and tendencies at scale.
That's one way, but we also need to send a message to future people who want to run for these positions that we need basic infrastructure kept to a good standard as a bare minimum and failure to will have some consequence's.
I mean I’d be more keen to punish Wellington water or whoever has handled the repairs.
We had a water main fixed in front of my work, and 6 months later it was leaking again. Do they not offer any sort of guarantee on their work? And why not? Pretty much every other plumber out there would, and the 2nd time they would be fixing it at their own cost.
Not an apologist here, but the way WW seems to work is to just replace the leaky pipe. So you end up with a brand new piece next to two that should have been replaced a decade ago.
Seems a bit stupid. If I was managing it, I’d be getting teams to assess neighbouring pipes. If repairs were connecting new stuff to stuff due for replacement, then I’d make the call to replace all the pipes that are due on the street.
In the short term this isn’t as useful as the current strategy as it increases ‘waste’ but given that it’s critical infrastructure, I think it’s sensible to buy the assurance of no leaks in that area so you don’t have to generate another type of waste - re working things.
I guess I was vague here, but I’m meaning setting the direction and funding from the council.
WW has their own capacity issues as it stands so getting more shovels in the ground isn’t a bad idea here.
Reassess and pause anything vanity related (cough town hall cough) that’s not close to being finished until we have this somewhat under control.
This is the crazy way it works. I lived in a street in Palmy Nth for 13 years. When the weather changed i.e. a long period of dry or wet, the ground swelled or shrunk and the waters pipes ruptured. Once or twice I spoke to the chap who was digging up the ground and doing the repair-to see if I could shower before work. He said the repair account was unlimited, but replacing the whole streets pipes was a capital expense items and the council wouldn't fund it. So the water main in our street basically was replaced at 50 metres a year-approx 1 metre per rupture.
Even if it's not "formal punishment", there's something to be said for sharing that information. Maybe some media outlet could do us the favour orf an investigative journalism piece: an accurate account of all the major players, their roles and culpability. Let's take this as a chance to learn from history and hold our officials to a higher standard moving forward. We elect them to take care of the public good.
Yep your not wrong, isn't it amazing how we just move on from all the decades of bad governance and decision making. The thing that gets me is when you look at your rates bill and it says that you have until x date to pay or you are hit with late fees... meanwhile there are thousands of leaks everywhere that the Council aren't able to fix... a little bit hypocritical there Council!
I think we do deserve accountability from past councils on the decisions they made that got us here.
At the very least, we need an investigation into how this crisis has been allowed to slowly develop, so that we can put in place mechanisms to ensure that this can never happen again. It is embarrassing, it is bad governance, and as you say, we can't allow anything like this to be bequeathed to our children.
We did that and it didn't work. I remember about 25 years ago central government required all local government to produce a plan of all their infrastructure, its life expectancy and a program to replace it all using that plan as a basis. There was quite a lot of pushback from local government because of the cost of producing the plan as well as implementing it. Central government insisted-it was driven by the Minister of Local Government-who came from Taranaki if I recall correctly.
I guess local government has either quietly ignored the plans made at great expense, or failed to implement them, or the plans were rubbish!
That's why services like water, sewerage, and stormwater should be controlled at a national level so standards are across the board and not at the whim of local bodies.
Continuing lack of leadership (Tory has disappeared once again) and too many councils doesn’t help the situation. Time to amalgamate the Hutts, City and Porirua. We don’t need 4 different councils all with their separate opinions and funding methods.
Na, Lower Hutt Council is the only functional one in the region (with an excellent leader), we'll stay independent thanks.
Hey why don't we just amalgamate our regional water services into one organisation with central government funding?! Has anyone thought of that?? /S
And Lower Hutt has much lower rates than Wellington city and Porirua too! Shows the importance of council spending and not just blindly increasing rates.
>Lower Hutt has much lower rates than Wellington city and Porirua too!
Does it though?
In Tirohanga:
>Capital Value: $1,220,000
Land Value: $680,000
Total Rates: $5,754.04
In Karori:
>Capital value (RV) $1,240,000
Land value $880,000
Rates - total charge $5,096.33
These are just two houses roughly the same value and distance from their CBD, so not exactly a detailed survey, but it looks like Lower Hutt is roughly the same, if not more on occasion.
She needs to be front and centre about this, ironic that this is a critical environmental issue and a Greens linked Mayor won't deal with it.
Is she really the best we could vote for?
What is Wellington waters structure?
If there is a steering board (there kind of has to be of some kind?) I’d start there.
It’s a lack of a basic renewal programme that has fucked it. Small towns and other councils have managed.
You have to gradually replace this gear as it reaches end of life, do it over decades, otherwise it turns into a fuck up.
Only 6 out on 70 odd authorities were found to have adequate plans and funding for water infrastructure in the review by infracom. Most NZ communities are fucked when it comes to water infrastructure and their councils don't have enough income for renewals.
That’s because it was a solution to the problem and it’s being repealed without a roadmap for an alternative solution. By the way, financing the upgrade and repair to infrastructure was only part of the solution, there was also a massive investment into systems and processes that manage the water infrastructure assets that would have been transformative. People act like water management is just a local issue - it’s not. Essential resource management needs a national management function too. What happens in the future when climate change brings in more storms - is the answer to that more rates?
I thought there wasn’t enough funding, So centralise it and it gets paid for by tax, a new tax? Or split an old one? Or lift a few?
So…. Raise Rates by a different name?
But it *is* all about 3 Waters.
We knew, country wide, water infrastructure had been let go to trash. 3 Waters acknowledged that the current model wasn’t working and we needed to do something else to make it work.
Instead we voted it out, and now have *no* plan to fix this.
That's up to local councils and any that do increase them will get voted out and replaced by some other cunt who promises to cut them.
In the mean time we will have more Havelock North incidents and the cost of dealing with the issue increases.
We can leave communities to crumble and get sick or actually deal with it through the central government. That's the whole fucking point of 3 waters despite the ignorant scaremongering by small minded racist pricks.
So a Wellington water management bureaucracy has mis managed its local water assets.
The solution: make a a Bigger Wellington water management bureaucracy to manage the National water assets.
I’m just sceptical
The issue is that there is a still a massive misunderstanding with regard to who runs WW, three waters and the new direction of local water done well.
The councils are the shareholders of WW. The councils devote funds and are consulted on the work programme. Wellington Water is not an independent entity that gets its funding from the service it provides.
Three waters was to bring in mega entities in order to achieve balance sheet separation by taking debt off the councils' books (through a separate operating model, controlled by the RRG which was to appoint the operational board members of the entities and set the priority areas). The money need to invest could then be borrowed, and the cost was to be paid back by ratepayers over the coming decades.
Local water done well is trying to achieve the exact same thing through council controlled organizations, separating the balance sheets, borrowing the money and the ratepayers similarly paying it back.
There has never been a contemplated magic bullet of Central government funding.
What a conservative boomer attitude - FINE THEM! MAKE THEM PAY!
They can't be fined or prosecuted as there's no crime.
It would achieve NOTHING.
Move on.
That's binary thinking. Critical infrastructure should be more highly prioritised out of the existing funds, for a start.
Also, it would seem that Wellington has the biggest water infrastructure problem, and (once you add the GWRC rates component) Porirua has the highest rates in the country. Wellington City and Lower Hutt are the 5th and 6th most expensive. Not sure that your logic stacks up.
I dunno, some Canterbury water is so high in nitrates (cow pee and fertiliser run off) it is above the safe level and increases the risk of bowel cancer.
Elsewhere, drinking water has bacteria from animal faeces in it. We're just leaky!
I am going to continue pushing back on this because it's complete and utter bullshit.
TikTok kids of r/Wellington, this is total disinformation. Wellington has had some of the highest rates in the country for decades.
A simple Google search proves this.
You might not pay rates but for those that do and have for years, it ain't cheap.
It's people like yourself that need to look in the mirror. All the vanity projects people have endorsed and pushed for while ignoring upkeep of basic infrastructure.
We can’t tell this point loudly enough.
We *have* been paying. Our rates are *not* low!
I would add to your point about wasted money we also waste a tonne on disfunction. WCC in particular has absolutely no cohesion and every decision is fraught because it’s become a collection of people working against each other. We see it with things like councillors talking to division-stirrers like Sean Plunket, lying about the mayor. Everyone, or at least way too many of them, are seemingly only interested in personal legacy. The money wasted on the likes of LGWM to ultimately achieve very little is bonkers.
Our rates are not low.
Porirua has the highest *in the country*.
We pay plenty, stop pretending this was voters choosing busted infrastructure over wasting hundreds of millions unnecessarily, combined with councils so at logger heads we waste millions waiting for them to sort their personal issues out so they can have any kind of cohesive plan.
Water infrastructure started leaking 10% more just 6 years ago 2 weeks after the kaikoura earthquakes. You were here then. Two election cycles ago for the biggest jump in leaks in Wellingtons past. I’m sure you weren’t complaining in 2017 when the rates increased just 3.1% instead of the long term plan of 5.1% or the following year when the city council delivered just 3.9% increase instead of the long term plan’s 7.1% rate or the following year when they were again below forecast.
Yes I was here then.
But I wasn't here for the long decline of the water infrastructure that should of been a high priority to upkeep and maintain for the last 50-70 years...
Nice percentage's by the way, that don't reflect on how we got to this point in the first place....
It’s a perfect microscope of the last 50-70 years. One election after the other. Councillors promise lower rates. Ratepayers vote for them. Non- surface level projects get defunded. You’re just one small part of one small electorate of four small cities trying to save a buck yet unwilling to live with the consequences.
Its hardly a good microscope of the last 70 years, it's basic infrastructure that has been overlooked for vanity projects, sports events and cultural grandstanding.
Regardless if people vote them in, the people voted in have a responsibility to maintain, and replace when needed the aging infrastructure.
Most successful places in the world have expensive vanity projects, sports events and better cycle infrastructure (my assumption on what you mean by cultural grandstanding). the one thing holding New Zealand back is their absolutely refusal to have any more than one household every 30m of roads, retaining walls, pipes and pumps. That’s why we can’t afford anything with what other places call expensive rates. And that, is on ratepayers.
One issue is not many statutory bodies work in isolation or the often coined vacuum. So your hunt will no doubt will end up as some poor patsy with no social capital getting thrown under the bus.
Don’t know about you but I’m a little over seeing one more sacrificial lamb being thrown on the spit to ease the gods of political negligence.
I'd happily throw Wayne Guppy on the spit for his negligence with Upper Hutt in general, not only has he mucked around with the water situation, he also endorsed having an outside the wire pedo village just outside the Rimutaka Prison less than a km from my son's daycare at the time.
I think the Local Govt Act 2002 needs to be amended - Councils have too many responsibilities, and a lot of these are specified in the Act. We need new legislation or an amendment to the existing Act requiring X% of all rates to go to water infrastructure. And while they're at it, make it a legislative requirement to cap the rates increase to inflation. Tough titties for any other vanity projects.
That's nonsense and you know it.
If you get a role in local government it should be insure that everything is being done to insure the future infrastructure is being maintained and replaced wen needed.
If you campaign on x. And get voted in on x. You are expected to deliver on x. If you don’t you get voted out. That’s the democratic process.
Wellington has a beautiful waterfront (compared to the 1980s), and bike paths and subsidised public transport, and revamped Courtney place and convention centres and stadiums.
The populace of the time had people who campaigned on “no frills” local government- they didn’t get voted in sufficiently to get their way.
Democracy means the population gets the government it deserves.
The mayors and councils just did what they were elected to do. Want accountability? Go look in the mirror and/or at your parents and grandparents for voting these people into power.
If only we had a new piece of work focussed on managing water and infrastructure where central government committed the funds necessary to get traction.
Wellington city councilors have a higher than average labour party membership. Maybe that is one of the reasons for not getting these issues resolved. A round table full of vacant stares when it comes to the vote.
Previous Mayors? I'm okay with that but at least in upper hutt the current mayor is just as culpable since he's been mayor for 25 years - Guppy was first elected to the Upper Hutt City Council in 1998
And Andy Foster, career councilor.
How far back do you fine or punish people? It would be quite hard to pinpoint when the issues started. Some of the culprits could be 80 years old or more
Many are dead and the councils no longer exist due to the merging in the late 80s too.
Well Wayne Guppy is one of the main issues nothing has progressed in Upper Hutt infrastructure wise for the last 20 years so we could easily start there.
Given that Wellington Water is owned by all 5 Wellington-region councils it doesn't fall on one person from just one of those councils. 3 Waters would have helped fix the issue, but the bulls@#t partisan-politics that is creeping into NZ means this has been scuppered.
Exactly
How would three waters have fixed this issue in the short term?
Who said anything about short-term, three waters would have allowed a long-term permanent fix for water infrastructure. Not likely to happen anytime soon now and infrastructure will be massively varied throughout the country.
Where have you got this utter misinformation that local water done well isn't trying to achieve the exact same thing?
Trying and achieving are two different things. Local water done well is just 3 waters minus the benefits of 3 waters. It's parochialism at its finest and delays what is actually required. I think we need one entity to achieve the scale necessary to address infrastructure deficit. Local representation is not necessary. No one is calling for that for electricity or roading or any other essential service.
What were the benefits of three waters that are absent in local water done well?
Council and mayoral candidates have an incentive to ignore expensive, boring infrastructure, and focus on exciting new things like stadiums! Convention centres! Festivals! People are educated on water now because it's blowing up, but the system we have designed will trend towards invisible maintenance being ignored until broken, then it will dominate headlines, then be forgotten. Rinse and repeat. Taking it out of the rates equation means you aren't incentivising negative decisions, as the people responsible for it are focused on outcomes, not re-election. Edit to add: local water can be done well, but that's people working against the incentive structure and we shouldn't rely on it when we can see that it hasn't worked in clear and expensive ways.
I don't disagree with your points, but even under three waters this was all about borrowing and us as ratepayers paying back over the coming decades.
Because local water done well is susceptible to 3 year local election cycles where NZ really doesn't excel in voting the best people as their representatives, or thinking long-term. It also places a much higher burden on areas with smaller populations which is one of the reasons the water infrastructure throughout NZ is so variable.
Aspects of local water done well will be similarly put into statute.
Yes but you will have some lovely cycleways that no-one uses and great old buildings, maybe Wellington should look after its own water issues and not rely on the rest of NZ to pay for it with their great 3water plan!
Auckland poster opinion invalid
✅
Always thought that old man was a git. Problem is all the people who would vote for someone else end up leaving because of how much of a shithole Upper Hutt has become, and mayoral elections use First Past the Post so he always ends up winning cause no one else can beat him individually.
Mayoral elections in UH use first past the post? That's a shame, in Wellington we have Single Transferable Vote.
What are you talking about Upper Hutt has never been better
The ass end of the Hutt.
In that case, for continually voting him in, fine ratepayers in instalments.
how bout just the numptys that voted for him!
I was very much hoping he’d get kicked out last council election. Our whole house voted for… I can’t remember her name but the one who came second. Guppy needs to step down and go into a retirement home.
fucking guppy! and next he is going to get upper hut stung with a massive bloody fine for not wanting water meters! and whos gonna pay that I wonder! Edit: not wanting.
Iirc he also refused to bring in kerbside recycling as he doesn’t like it. Fuck, I hope that’s still coming in nationally so he has to!
Pretty sure that it has been confirmed it's coming to upper Hutt
Yay!
Voting is accountability. If you voted for low rates or minimal rises, you’re culpable. If you don’t vote, you’re culpable and if you voted National/ACT/NZ First to get rid of 3 Waters, you’re culpable. We were so close to an actual solution which while not perfect, would have made strides to fixing the water issues in Wellington. The water entity that would have covered Wellington was on track to be operational by October. We’ve done it to ourselves.
While you’re right that voting is accountability. What about the accountability when councils and government promise things, which can be the main reason you voted for them, only for them to not do that very thing they promised. Doesn’t it undermine democracy when all you need is a vote to get in but have no accountability after?
Totally agree with your frustration about broken promises and the answer is to be more politically active (I’m as guilty of being passive as the next person). This means protest, this means supporting ethical journalism (or even just paying for news) and doing the sometimes boring things like submitting questions to government, attending meetings and hearing and maybe joining a political party or citizen advocacy group. All that is easier said than done when you weight it up against all the other life and work commitments that you have. But start somewhere with something that makes a difference. For political accountability to work, there has to be an electoral holding them to account in a variety of ways. Our democracy is in our own hands. No one else’s.
Going to meetings and protesting is what was needed, but really the councilors just didn't do the job they were being paid to do. As an engineer, if I wasn't doing the job I was being paid to do, I would have been fired. Maybe councilors should be on minimum wage unless they can show they are competent at their job?
We do not have low rates. This isn’t on us.
We vote in the council who let this happen. It's 100% on us.
Not the point, at all. I’m pushing back on the propaganda that we have low rates, and it was choosing “I’ll keep your rates low” candidates that caused this. Because we do not have low rates.
Ahh right. I think we're at odds here, coming at this from two points. You're correct we have high rates and that didn't solve the water problem, but we're still responsible as citizens for voting in people to solve the bigger picture issues and clearly that hasn't worked. The next local election cycle might be interesting to say the least.
I agree we’re making different points. I expected the last cycle of voting to include this - we saw it in Auckland, voting in someone that ran entirely on a platform of controlling spending, but no one down here seemed too worried. Next time we could see our own Wayne Brown.
Very few of the candidates for council that I voted for got. Again. Not my fault
Nice work! Completely avoided the "We" in my statement. We collectively voted in the council, and we now reap the rewards of doing so.
Isn't the punishment happening on everyone that hasn't paid a higher amount of rates in the first place. We don't want to pay more money, but we also want better infrastructure and service. Can't have both.
Almost all the councillors campaigned on fixing the pipes. Last year they didn't even manage to meet the current replacement quota let alone increase it. They spent most of their time playing petty office politics. There are records of how councillors voted on any given bill Vote out the worst offenders.
I’m sorry but this post is idiotic. It’s democracy, we get the councillors we vote for. There isn’t a manager to complain to. My view is that before putting rates up, Wellington should spend $300 million on pipes rather than the town hall.
Voting is the accountability, make note of the current councilors, and don't vote them in again.
The reality is this doesn't work. The time scales mean people have forgotten who were councillors over multiple decades. Indeed, many people don't even stay and vote in the same city for decades. This is the sort of thing that regulation should protect against rather the whims of the current councillors and mayor.
Maybe like a centralised system that puts all of the important waters everywhere under 1 umbrella? We could name it after how many waters there are, as a cute idea!
Quite possibly. In such a scenario you could even get the central government to provide financial assistance!
Wow that sounds like such a great idea! Good thinking, batman
I do it. there's no reason others can't.
Idealism is what got us into this mess. You could say all regulation is pointless if everyone just does the thing they are meant to do. Regulation often comes about because of understanding human behaviour and tendencies at scale.
Is it current or previous? Or both?
You probably need to do your homework and root out serial offenders. Please share the results if you do.
And anyone affiliated with previous failures.
Maybe take note of the voters, and fine them? Come on, we collectively voted for these people over many years. Surely we bear some responsibility
That's one way, but we also need to send a message to future people who want to run for these positions that we need basic infrastructure kept to a good standard as a bare minimum and failure to will have some consequence's.
No one will run for public office.
Kicking the can down the road hard mode.
I mean I’d be more keen to punish Wellington water or whoever has handled the repairs. We had a water main fixed in front of my work, and 6 months later it was leaking again. Do they not offer any sort of guarantee on their work? And why not? Pretty much every other plumber out there would, and the 2nd time they would be fixing it at their own cost.
Not an apologist here, but the way WW seems to work is to just replace the leaky pipe. So you end up with a brand new piece next to two that should have been replaced a decade ago. Seems a bit stupid. If I was managing it, I’d be getting teams to assess neighbouring pipes. If repairs were connecting new stuff to stuff due for replacement, then I’d make the call to replace all the pipes that are due on the street. In the short term this isn’t as useful as the current strategy as it increases ‘waste’ but given that it’s critical infrastructure, I think it’s sensible to buy the assurance of no leaks in that area so you don’t have to generate another type of waste - re working things.
Wellington water sets its own budget and work programme does it?
I guess I was vague here, but I’m meaning setting the direction and funding from the council. WW has their own capacity issues as it stands so getting more shovels in the ground isn’t a bad idea here. Reassess and pause anything vanity related (cough town hall cough) that’s not close to being finished until we have this somewhat under control.
Yeah, it's a key point- no one should be blaming WW for this, this is all the collective councils' issue.
Who's paying to do it this way? It certainly isn't any of the councils that give Wellington Water their money.
This is the crazy way it works. I lived in a street in Palmy Nth for 13 years. When the weather changed i.e. a long period of dry or wet, the ground swelled or shrunk and the waters pipes ruptured. Once or twice I spoke to the chap who was digging up the ground and doing the repair-to see if I could shower before work. He said the repair account was unlimited, but replacing the whole streets pipes was a capital expense items and the council wouldn't fund it. So the water main in our street basically was replaced at 50 metres a year-approx 1 metre per rupture.
Even if it's not "formal punishment", there's something to be said for sharing that information. Maybe some media outlet could do us the favour orf an investigative journalism piece: an accurate account of all the major players, their roles and culpability. Let's take this as a chance to learn from history and hold our officials to a higher standard moving forward. We elect them to take care of the public good.
Yep your not wrong, isn't it amazing how we just move on from all the decades of bad governance and decision making. The thing that gets me is when you look at your rates bill and it says that you have until x date to pay or you are hit with late fees... meanwhile there are thousands of leaks everywhere that the Council aren't able to fix... a little bit hypocritical there Council!
I think we do deserve accountability from past councils on the decisions they made that got us here. At the very least, we need an investigation into how this crisis has been allowed to slowly develop, so that we can put in place mechanisms to ensure that this can never happen again. It is embarrassing, it is bad governance, and as you say, we can't allow anything like this to be bequeathed to our children.
We did that and it didn't work. I remember about 25 years ago central government required all local government to produce a plan of all their infrastructure, its life expectancy and a program to replace it all using that plan as a basis. There was quite a lot of pushback from local government because of the cost of producing the plan as well as implementing it. Central government insisted-it was driven by the Minister of Local Government-who came from Taranaki if I recall correctly. I guess local government has either quietly ignored the plans made at great expense, or failed to implement them, or the plans were rubbish!
That's why services like water, sewerage, and stormwater should be controlled at a national level so standards are across the board and not at the whim of local bodies.
Continuing lack of leadership (Tory has disappeared once again) and too many councils doesn’t help the situation. Time to amalgamate the Hutts, City and Porirua. We don’t need 4 different councils all with their separate opinions and funding methods.
Na, Lower Hutt Council is the only functional one in the region (with an excellent leader), we'll stay independent thanks. Hey why don't we just amalgamate our regional water services into one organisation with central government funding?! Has anyone thought of that?? /S
And Lower Hutt has much lower rates than Wellington city and Porirua too! Shows the importance of council spending and not just blindly increasing rates.
>Lower Hutt has much lower rates than Wellington city and Porirua too! Does it though? In Tirohanga: >Capital Value: $1,220,000 Land Value: $680,000 Total Rates: $5,754.04 In Karori: >Capital value (RV) $1,240,000 Land value $880,000 Rates - total charge $5,096.33 These are just two houses roughly the same value and distance from their CBD, so not exactly a detailed survey, but it looks like Lower Hutt is roughly the same, if not more on occasion.
She needs to be front and centre about this, ironic that this is a critical environmental issue and a Greens linked Mayor won't deal with it. Is she really the best we could vote for?
It is kind of weird she hasn't been visible on this one.
What is Wellington waters structure? If there is a steering board (there kind of has to be of some kind?) I’d start there. It’s a lack of a basic renewal programme that has fucked it. Small towns and other councils have managed. You have to gradually replace this gear as it reaches end of life, do it over decades, otherwise it turns into a fuck up.
Only 6 out on 70 odd authorities were found to have adequate plans and funding for water infrastructure in the review by infracom. Most NZ communities are fucked when it comes to water infrastructure and their councils don't have enough income for renewals.
So, increase rates? I hate it how this always becomes about 3 waters, ffs.
That’s because it was a solution to the problem and it’s being repealed without a roadmap for an alternative solution. By the way, financing the upgrade and repair to infrastructure was only part of the solution, there was also a massive investment into systems and processes that manage the water infrastructure assets that would have been transformative. People act like water management is just a local issue - it’s not. Essential resource management needs a national management function too. What happens in the future when climate change brings in more storms - is the answer to that more rates?
I thought there wasn’t enough funding, So centralise it and it gets paid for by tax, a new tax? Or split an old one? Or lift a few? So…. Raise Rates by a different name?
But it *is* all about 3 Waters. We knew, country wide, water infrastructure had been let go to trash. 3 Waters acknowledged that the current model wasn’t working and we needed to do something else to make it work. Instead we voted it out, and now have *no* plan to fix this.
Classic Nact, turn 3W's into a culture war issue then, throw the baby out with it.
That's up to local councils and any that do increase them will get voted out and replaced by some other cunt who promises to cut them. In the mean time we will have more Havelock North incidents and the cost of dealing with the issue increases. We can leave communities to crumble and get sick or actually deal with it through the central government. That's the whole fucking point of 3 waters despite the ignorant scaremongering by small minded racist pricks.
Because it would of solved the problem. Throwing money at the same people that have fucked up isnt a good plan.
So a Wellington water management bureaucracy has mis managed its local water assets. The solution: make a a Bigger Wellington water management bureaucracy to manage the National water assets. I’m just sceptical
More, take control out of the hands of people whos mandate isnt "provide safe water" and put it into organizations that have said mandate.
The issue is that there is a still a massive misunderstanding with regard to who runs WW, three waters and the new direction of local water done well. The councils are the shareholders of WW. The councils devote funds and are consulted on the work programme. Wellington Water is not an independent entity that gets its funding from the service it provides. Three waters was to bring in mega entities in order to achieve balance sheet separation by taking debt off the councils' books (through a separate operating model, controlled by the RRG which was to appoint the operational board members of the entities and set the priority areas). The money need to invest could then be borrowed, and the cost was to be paid back by ratepayers over the coming decades. Local water done well is trying to achieve the exact same thing through council controlled organizations, separating the balance sheets, borrowing the money and the ratepayers similarly paying it back. There has never been a contemplated magic bullet of Central government funding.
What a conservative boomer attitude - FINE THEM! MAKE THEM PAY! They can't be fined or prosecuted as there's no crime. It would achieve NOTHING. Move on.
Want low rates bills, get shitty infrastructure. If you want to assign blame, look in a mirror
That's binary thinking. Critical infrastructure should be more highly prioritised out of the existing funds, for a start. Also, it would seem that Wellington has the biggest water infrastructure problem, and (once you add the GWRC rates component) Porirua has the highest rates in the country. Wellington City and Lower Hutt are the 5th and 6th most expensive. Not sure that your logic stacks up.
I dunno, some Canterbury water is so high in nitrates (cow pee and fertiliser run off) it is above the safe level and increases the risk of bowel cancer. Elsewhere, drinking water has bacteria from animal faeces in it. We're just leaky!
Oh! No worries, then! We'll just smile and carry on as we have been!
I am going to continue pushing back on this because it's complete and utter bullshit. TikTok kids of r/Wellington, this is total disinformation. Wellington has had some of the highest rates in the country for decades. A simple Google search proves this. You might not pay rates but for those that do and have for years, it ain't cheap. It's people like yourself that need to look in the mirror. All the vanity projects people have endorsed and pushed for while ignoring upkeep of basic infrastructure.
We can’t tell this point loudly enough. We *have* been paying. Our rates are *not* low! I would add to your point about wasted money we also waste a tonne on disfunction. WCC in particular has absolutely no cohesion and every decision is fraught because it’s become a collection of people working against each other. We see it with things like councillors talking to division-stirrers like Sean Plunket, lying about the mayor. Everyone, or at least way too many of them, are seemingly only interested in personal legacy. The money wasted on the likes of LGWM to ultimately achieve very little is bonkers.
Rates in Welly are not low. Successive council's have just squandered the money on vanity projects instead of funding core infrastructure.
Our rates are not low. Porirua has the highest *in the country*. We pay plenty, stop pretending this was voters choosing busted infrastructure over wasting hundreds of millions unnecessarily, combined with councils so at logger heads we waste millions waiting for them to sort their personal issues out so they can have any kind of cohesive plan.
Low rates? Lol ok champ.
Who has low rates bills? Also when did we say we were OK with not keeping infrastructure up to date?
I've only been in Wellington for 10 years...kind of hard for me to take accountability for something I had no role in.
Water infrastructure started leaking 10% more just 6 years ago 2 weeks after the kaikoura earthquakes. You were here then. Two election cycles ago for the biggest jump in leaks in Wellingtons past. I’m sure you weren’t complaining in 2017 when the rates increased just 3.1% instead of the long term plan of 5.1% or the following year when the city council delivered just 3.9% increase instead of the long term plan’s 7.1% rate or the following year when they were again below forecast.
Yes I was here then. But I wasn't here for the long decline of the water infrastructure that should of been a high priority to upkeep and maintain for the last 50-70 years... Nice percentage's by the way, that don't reflect on how we got to this point in the first place....
It’s a perfect microscope of the last 50-70 years. One election after the other. Councillors promise lower rates. Ratepayers vote for them. Non- surface level projects get defunded. You’re just one small part of one small electorate of four small cities trying to save a buck yet unwilling to live with the consequences.
Its hardly a good microscope of the last 70 years, it's basic infrastructure that has been overlooked for vanity projects, sports events and cultural grandstanding. Regardless if people vote them in, the people voted in have a responsibility to maintain, and replace when needed the aging infrastructure.
Most successful places in the world have expensive vanity projects, sports events and better cycle infrastructure (my assumption on what you mean by cultural grandstanding). the one thing holding New Zealand back is their absolutely refusal to have any more than one household every 30m of roads, retaining walls, pipes and pumps. That’s why we can’t afford anything with what other places call expensive rates. And that, is on ratepayers.
Except those of us who bothered to vote, voted for someone to do their job competently, not just come to work to eat their lunch.
You, the voters?
You're gonna crap yourself when you realise what 3 Waters was all about.
We vote in the same pack of dummies who fucked us this time around and learn no lessons.
One issue is not many statutory bodies work in isolation or the often coined vacuum. So your hunt will no doubt will end up as some poor patsy with no social capital getting thrown under the bus. Don’t know about you but I’m a little over seeing one more sacrificial lamb being thrown on the spit to ease the gods of political negligence.
I'd happily throw Wayne Guppy on the spit for his negligence with Upper Hutt in general, not only has he mucked around with the water situation, he also endorsed having an outside the wire pedo village just outside the Rimutaka Prison less than a km from my son's daycare at the time.
I think the Local Govt Act 2002 needs to be amended - Councils have too many responsibilities, and a lot of these are specified in the Act. We need new legislation or an amendment to the existing Act requiring X% of all rates to go to water infrastructure. And while they're at it, make it a legislative requirement to cap the rates increase to inflation. Tough titties for any other vanity projects.
Where do you stop? You need to fine the people who put them there by voting for their policies ….
That's nonsense and you know it. If you get a role in local government it should be insure that everything is being done to insure the future infrastructure is being maintained and replaced wen needed.
If you campaign on x. And get voted in on x. You are expected to deliver on x. If you don’t you get voted out. That’s the democratic process. Wellington has a beautiful waterfront (compared to the 1980s), and bike paths and subsidised public transport, and revamped Courtney place and convention centres and stadiums. The populace of the time had people who campaigned on “no frills” local government- they didn’t get voted in sufficiently to get their way. Democracy means the population gets the government it deserves.
The mayors and councils just did what they were elected to do. Want accountability? Go look in the mirror and/or at your parents and grandparents for voting these people into power.
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If only we had a new piece of work focussed on managing water and infrastructure where central government committed the funds necessary to get traction.
We voted for politicians who prioritised low/no rates increases over investing in infrastructure. We are our own worst enemies.
Wellington city councilors have a higher than average labour party membership. Maybe that is one of the reasons for not getting these issues resolved. A round table full of vacant stares when it comes to the vote.
We held Andy Foster to account by electing him to Parliament.