5 June 2019

Information provided:

Regarding elected member salaries, these are determined by the Remuneration Authority, an independent body set up by Parliament to handle the remuneration of key office holders such as Judges, Members of Parliament, local government representatives, and some individual office holders and board members of independent statutory bodies (www.remauthority.govt.nz)

For your understanding you may find it useful to check the information re local government HERE on that website, which includes information about the process and criteria.

Comment from Rotorua Lakes Council Chief Executive Geoff Williams:

"These calculations appear to be based on the Taxpayers' Union annual Ratepayers' Report which, as I have said in the past, is very misleading as these reports are based on some dubious assumptions.

For example, they tend to calculate personnel (staff) costs per ratepayer by dividing the total cost of that (as per Council's Annual Report) by the number of urban residential ratepayers, so just one group of ratepayers rather than all ratepayers (residential, commercial, rural). There are more than 29,600 rating units in the district but some are non-rateable and others pay only service rates so about 28,500 pay rates.

We also believe our council gets placed in a grouping of 27 provincial councils with populations over 20,000 so we are being compared to mostly smaller councils, not just like-sized councils.

The elected members' salaries are set by the independent Remuneration Authority which will be able to explain to you its process and criteria for setting those."

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Media: Rotorua Daily Post
Topic: Road safety and speed limits

AA is accusing councils for lowering speed limits on roads rather than upgrading roads to make them safer.

"Some are using the guide's recommendations unchanged while other places have adjusted them, so it's inconsistent."

-What is the council response to these allegations on "choosing the easy option" instead of improving the safety?

-What are the requirements and guidlines in changing a road speed and what process is involved in changing the speed?

-With the high number of injuries and fatalities on Rotorua roads, what does the council plan to do on these roads?

-How does the council ensure the road-using public were being sufficiently consulted on proposed changes?

From Infrastructure Group Manager Stavros Michael:

"Rotorua Lakes Council undertakes an extensive process when considering speed limit changes and follows the guidelines set by NZTA.

Council undertakes speed limit reviews approximately every 3 years, focusing on roads that have been highlighted by members of the public or communities, roads where changes have occurred (eg development) or for some other specific reason (eg recommendation from a Coroner's report). Members of the public or communities can inform council of concerns or requests regarding a speed limit at any time for council's consideration.

The process for considering speed limit changes involves extensive assessments that take multiple factors into consideration including crash statistics, road condition, monitoring of actual speeds vehicles travel at versus posted speed limit, and feedback from the public gained through engagement with residents or communities and/or the formal public submissions and hearings process that is undertaken for recommended changes.

The NZTA guidelines provide the guiding principles and considerations for any review.

It takes almost a year to go through the process required before we make recommendations to change speed limits including all the assessment and monitoring, then evaluation that helps us develop our recommendations ahead of community consultation and/or engagement. Council is always open to consider taking action outside of that 3-year period where need for a change is considered to be urgent.

It should be noted that there are many causes of road crashes, ranging from vehicle condition and driver or pedestrian error or inattention, to road condition. Council work closely with the police regarding roading and road safety and they notify Council of crashes where road condition is considered to be a factor to enable us to take appropriate action.

Council also undertakes a variety of road safety initiatives including programmes in schools, driver workshops and awareness campaigns, often in partnership with other agencies such as the police.

We are unaware of any "allegations" in relation to the process that is followed by Rotorua Lakes Council."

Additional info

The most recent review of speed limits was conducted during 2017 and following consultation with the community Councillors adopted the proposed changes in June 2018 (see details HERE on council website). Council recommended that staff reassess the recommended speed limits for Hamurana Road. The review was considered by the Strategy, Policy & Finance committee meeting on 9 August after which the full Council adopted the recommended changes on 30 August 2018.

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Media: Rotorua Daily Post
Topic: CBD parking system

By my calculations it has been six months since stage one of the new i-park parking system was rolled out in November last year. So I thought it would be timely to do a story about how it's going so far given some people were against some of the changes.

Questions as follows please:

- When did i-park officially take over?

- How many jobs have been affected by the new system? Has any one either been made redundant or been moved into a different role? If so how many people or FTE?

- How much money has the new system saved the council to date?

- How much money has the council spent installing the new system including the machines, car and staff training?

- Is the i-park car fully functional yet?

- How many tickets have been issued since the roll out? How does this compare with the six months prior?

- What was the value of the tickets issued? How does this compare with the six months prior?

- How many tickets have been waived? How does this compare with the six months prior?

- How much revenue has been gathered from people paying for parking? How does this compare with the six months prior?

Arrangements were made for reporter to meet with Operations Group Manager Henry Weston and Community Compliance Team Manager Kurt Williams to sit down with the reporter and work through her enquiry.

The following was covered during the interview: