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South Waikato District Council, more bullying, more lies

Yes, it seems that my local council is back to its normal tricks of bullying, lying and utter incompetence.

This, despite hiking our rates by an eye-watering 18.5 percent at a time when inflation is less than half that figure.

At least they're consistent in their dumbwhuckery.

Let me tell you of the latest idiocy to come from the biggest, flashest building in town.

As regular readers know, I fly RC models at the local airfield and have done for around 20 years now.

When I first started flying there there were pretty much no rules and commonsense was the order of the day.

This worked very well and, being a safety-minded person, I introduced several measures designed to boost the level of safety well above that mandated by rules and regulations.

I made sure that the local club had a receiver on the local aircraft radio operating frequency so we could hear aircraft call up before they came into the area. This was something that wasn't actually required by regulation until many years later but it was just good old commonsense to do this well before those rules were invoked.

Likewise, I designed and built an ADSB alarm to give further warning of approaching aircraft -- something that still is not required by regulation but is used anyway because *safety*.

I have twice sat and attained the CAA-recognised "wings" certification which I held for fixed wing and multirotor craft. This is a proof of knowledge and competence.

My own personal liability insurance covers me for any imaginable damage that I could inflict on property, especially given that most of my craft are now just a few hundred grams in weight.

This year I did not renew my membership of the national model flying body because to do so would have meant that I was no longer able to fly my tiny drones (20g-200g) around my own house. That sort of thing is a breach of CAA regulations, even though when I challenged CAA to prosecute me for such infringements, they declined to do so, which kind of indicates that they see that there is actually no risk associated with such an activity on my own private property, below the tree-line.

Being able to fly around my own home is important to me because it's often the only place I can actually fly. Even though I was legally allowed to fly at the airfield, this could only be done with an assistant "spotter" to keep an eye out for passing aircraft and more often than not, nobody was available for this purpose -- meaning flying at home was the only option.

Not renewing my membership of the national body meant that my "wings" certification was no longer valid. It's a proof of competence and knowledge that is contingent on paid membership of the organisation. The CAA and MFNZ are effectively saying "if you don't pay the money, you become ignorant and incompetent overnight". Yeah... kind of crazy I know but as I've discovered over the years, rules and regulations often have far less to do with safety than they do with money.

So, since not renewing my subscription to the national body, I could no longer fly at the airfield without "supervision" by someone who was duely appointed by that body to be a supervisor/instructor. That wasn't a problem because I have a suitably qualified friend to do that whenever I'm flying at the field.

From the perspective of CAA regulations -- it's all legit, legal and above-board.

However, yesterday I got a letter from the South Waikato District Council advising me that I am now forbidden to fly at the airfield unless I renew my membership of the national body. They've changed the airfield rules -- without consultation -- to require membership as a condition of airfield use by RC model flyers.

It doesn't matter that it's not a legal requirement under CAA's regulations, the SWDC has decided that *they* will mandate this.

Why?

Well I think we all know why don't we?

Sadly, the consequences of this go far beyond affecting just myself. As a result of this change, we are now the only club in the entire country which can't allow a member of the public to "try out" the hobby if they front up on a Sunday and express an interest.

That same member of the public could climb into a Cessna 172 and go for a trial-flight with a few minutes at the controls under the guidance of a qualified instructor without any problems but if they want to try an RC model aircraft with dual controls under the guidance of a qualified instructor they'll have to first request permission from the council in writing then file their flight(s) with CAA.

Given that the SWDC don't work on a Sunday, this makes it impossible to share the hobby with members of the public in the way that every other club in the country does.

Is it about safety?

Well let's see. In the 20 years I've been at the airfield there have been four crashes of manned aircraft, some involving hospitalisation of the occupants. There has also been one person critically injured in the roll-over of a hotrod competing at the drag racing that is held there. Toy planes? Nothing more than a cut finger.

No, it's not about safety.

I mean, let's face it -- I've personally had over 60 years experience flying these things and I've developed some world-leading tech designed to keep everyone safe whilst being very pro-active about taking practical steps to ensure everyone is kept out of harms way.

Despite this, I now have a 30-something young woman telling me what's safe, what's not and what I can/can't do based on her flawed understanding of regulations written by people who themselves have zero experience, knowledge or qualification in this area.

Sixty-plus years of experience is insufficient. Developing world-leading safety tech makes me untrustworthy and being the single most active person in the world within the area of unmanned aircraft regulatory reform makes me too ignorant of the rules to be allowed to fly at our airfield.

So, accepting that the council has the power to bar me from flying at *their* airfield, I advised "Karen" that I would instead be flying at the local parks where, after YEARS of lobbying and hard work on my part, such activities are allowed.

And this is where the lies and bullying got worse.

Karen told me, with authority, that I would not be allowed to fly at any of the parks that were within 4Km of the airfield or helipad without a pilot's license or the MFNZ "wings" certification.

That is utter BS and I quoted the council's own drone policy which clearly states that such activity requires no such certifications if flown as a "shielded operation".

I'm sorry but this is an unacceptable but true to form attitude from the council. As regular viewers of my YouTube channel have seen first hand, this council feels it has the right to just "make shit up" on the fly and present it as rule, regulation or law.

They tried to stop me filming council proceedings with a claim that I needed their permission to film in a public place -- clearly a lie.

When I caught the last mayor telling lies I received a letter from the council's lawyers threatening me with defamation if the video exposing those lies wasn't taken down. That video remains up to this day because the truth is a damned good defense against defamation. The lawyers knew this so their letter was clearly just another attempt at bullying that would have probably worked against someone less informed than myself.

Even the competence of this council falls from day to day.

This month they changed the locks at the airfield and we were required to purchase a new key for $100 (inflation?). The keys had to be signed for so the woman in charge of this sent out an email with dates and times when she would be available to conduct the transaction. The problem was that those dates didn't make sense -- Thursday 17th October or something like that. I pointed out the error and a new apologetic email was sent with what was supposed to be the correct dates. Then another email arrived bearing another apology, the dates were still wrong.

So, with the correct time/dates in hand, I took a special trip to the council building to pay my $100 and pick up my key.

Karen could not be found and wasn't answering her mobile phone.

WTF council?

Yet again I got an apology and I was told to txt in advance to make sure she was actually there when she claimed she would be, before I came in again.

On the weekend I heard from another airfield user who had *exactly* the same experience -- a wasted trip because the woman couldn't be found, even though she had told everyone to come at that time/date.

FFS... what are they doing in that building and why are locals paying an extra 18.5 percent this year for this level of non-service?

There's no point in complaining about any of this though... the CEO doesn't even respond to my emails and, as a result of this, deprived the community of an opportunity to sell the airfield for probably more than its worth to an entity that was prepared to hand the runway and hangars back to the community by way of a not-for-profit trust.

In my honest opinion, based on my experiences (some of which I've spoken about, some of which I havent), this council is the most incompetent, bullying, lying group of thieves I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.

This is so sad for the people of this district, especially the businesses. I walked around the CBD in Tokoroa the other day and chatted with some of the local shop-owners that I know. Sadly, several of them expect to be shutting up shop after Christmas because they get absolutely no support from the local council and none of the naive attempts by council to promote and market the town have had any positive effect -- as I predicted. Let's face it, the last mayor praised the benefits of the $400,000 they spent on rebranding to create a slogan that claims "We love it here" and then promptly moved to Nelson the moment she was out of office. Disingenuous much?

Ah well, never mind. I suspect the council will now waste inordinate amounts of time and money trying to "catch me" flying at the airfield without permission. Fortunately I have a lot of footage taken when I was allowed to fly and they'll never know by looking at my videos whether it was taken today, last week, last month or last year.

Still, with the ability to pick the pockets or raid the bank accounts of locals as and when they choose, I'm sure they'll hire some private investigator to camp out at the airfield to continue the pursuit of their vendetta. Sad, so sad for the people of this district.

Carpe Diem folks!

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