15 August 2017

Media:

Bay of Plenty Business News

Topic: Tourism and infrastructure

Inquiry

Bay of Plenty Business News requested comment from Rotorua Lakes Council regarding the need for more infrastructure to accomodate growing tourism business.

Response

From Deputy Mayor Dave Donaldson:

Rotorua's growing and progressing and ensuring we have the infrastructure in place to enable and encourage that to continue is a challenge Council wants to frontfoot.

The district spatial plan will establish where and how we want Rotorua to develop and provide direction in terms of infrastructure.

A refresh of our 2030 Vision has identified opportunities based on the district's strengths and that's reflected in our 2017/18 annual plan big moves' which focus on growth, infrastructure, housing pressures and revitalisation of key tourism and amenity areas like our lakefront.

We can't do it alone - we need partnerships and central Government investment as well and we're working on a lot of fronts. We are, for example, working closely with NZTA on our roading needs, and will establish a special housing accord with the Government which will enable us to fast-track housing developments.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Media: Rotorua Daily Post

Topic: Funding from gambling

Inquiry

NOTE: This inquiry follows the Problem Gambling Foundation's call for all territorial local authorities to follow the lead of Hamilton City Council, which voted 8-3 to stop using money from pokies to fund projects.

From Rotorua Daily Post:

What Rotorua Lakes Council projects have been funded or partially funded by money obtained through gaming trusts in the past five years?

Problem Gambling have said "Councils have the authority to determine numbers of machines in their region and given the money these machines generate there is an inherent conflict of interest if councils benefit from grants derived from those same machines.

• Does RLC agree there is a conflict?
• Would the Rotorua community miss out on projects if this funding was not available?
• Could the decision to stop applying for pokie funding mean a rates increase for residents.

INFO SUBSEQUENTLY PROVIDED:

2014 - July 2017 RLC received a total $742,655.23 in direct pokie funding' according to information provided by the Problem Gambling Foundation - see table below

Response

As this isn't a topic which our Council's elected members have discussed or made a decision about there is no collective Council view on gaming trusts funds. You'd have to ask the elected members if you wanted to know their individual views.

For your info re allocations showing on the info from Problem Gambling Foundation, the $120,000 from NZ Community Trust was Crankworx ($88,000) + Glo Festival ($32,000)

From Group Manager Strategy Jean-Paul Gaston:

A lot of the funding Council seeks from trusts - not just gaming trusts - is to support community or major events.

For example Crankworx has attracted grants of between $10,000 and $88,000 and Glo Festival has received grants of between $15,000 and $32,500. Other events which have received grants from gaming trusts include FreeParking youth events, Tulip Festival, this year's Lions Fan Zone and Rotorua Safer Families activities.

It's possible that without gaming trust funds some events might not be able to go ahead or might need to be scaled down but any such decisions would depend on various factors including what other trusts might fund a particular activity (they all have different criteria) and whether Council was successful in gaining funding.

It's not possible to say if rates would be affected if Council decided to no longer use gaming trust funds. Elected members strike the rates annually based on the cost of delivering the service levels and work programmes to which they have agreed.