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Council update

New Zealand has local government elections in October - thank God!

Here in the South Waikato, my battles with the current crop of dullards ensconced behind a towering mound of free biscuits and a lake of coffee continue to oversee ridiculous inefficiencies, bad decisions and just plain lunacy.

I have been making regular videos for the local community that have served to enlighten them to the scope and magnitude of the idiocy that these tin-pot politicians and their executive have been inflicting on ratepayers.

As reported here previously, I have been made to pay a price for such insolence. Showcasing their failings is something that will not be tolerated because such abuses can only be safely undertaken behind a screen of opacity and non-disclosure. I've wrecked that for them by shining the spotlight of public scrutiny on their antics.

One of the latest demonstrations of their shortcomings are the new toilets being installed in the front of town -- as I have written about previously.

The issue now is not that these toilets cost 20 times more, per cubicle, than they could have otherwise been purchased for -- but that the installation time has already blown out by a factor of almost five times, with no end in sight.

Yep, we are now 23 days into the 5 day installation of these toilets and the area still looks like a bomb-sight with lengths of wood everywhere, unfinished ramps and cones/fences preventing unwitting people from injuring themselves.

Playing true to form, instead of making a statement and explaining the massive over-run or even acknowledging it, the council has raised their drawbridge, shuttered their windows and are pretending nothing is wrong.

But wait, there's even worse.

The South Waikato District Council has a marketing division they call "Space to Grow" and this team waste enormous amounts of ratepayers' money on unwise spends.

For example they blew nearly half a million dollars on a "rebranding" that nobody, not even council's own staff or managers can remember. That's anything but effective branding!

This same team have of course created a website that is little more than fluff and fantasy.

Even worse however, is the fact that last week I pointed out a very significant error in the numbers being displayed on this page Apparently the GDP of the entire South Waikato district is just $1.5 million.

WTF?

That figure should actually read 1.7 billion as confirmed by Infometrics.

But hey... millions or billions, they're all the same when you don't actually have to deliver value for the money you spend and have a government-granted right to dip into people's bank accounts to extract all the cash you need to keep the coffee and biscuits flowing.

yes, it's now been five days since I publicised this error -- and as of the time I wrote this column (5am on May 22nd), the error is still there. I think we all know that fixing it would take probably less than five minutes but obviously nobody can be bothered.

It's also well worth noting that obviously nobody visits this website anyway, or the error would have been noticed well before now. Or maybe it was noticed and reported to the council but, as now, they simply can't be arsed fixing it.

Given that this page is supposed to attract businesses and investment to the district, what will those who might actually visit the page think about risking their money to a district where the council doesn't give a toss about fixing its mistakes?

I know that most councils are criticised by those they serve but really, the SWDC must take the crown for most idiotic. At least that trophy will go nicely on the mantle along side the Mayor's own trophy for being the worst in the country.

I guess they win the medal for consistency and playing true to form.

As a concerned member of the community, I shall continue keeping fellow residents informed in a way that nobody has done before. Unless the SWDC's assassins succeed in their mission first :-)

It is primarily because of my hard work to educate the public that it's likely we'll see a gutting of the current council and a whole bunch of new faces in the chambers come November. And to think, all this time I'd really rather have been peacefully flying my RC model aircraft and drones at the airfield as I have done for nearly 20 years. They were just too stupid to realise that without that distraction (thanks to their vindictive ban), I would focus instead on scrutinising their activities.

Dumb as a sack of rocks!

Carpe Diem folks!

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