I wrote last week about the big meeting that was coming up on Wednesday of this week and said I would update on the three big decisions we had to make.

Firstly, council voted to take up the government offer to all councils of doing an Annual Plan this year instead of the scheduled Long Term (ten year) Plan and to do a nine year LTP next year. 

Listen to the interview with The Outlet podcast here

This will allow staff to re-integrate the three waters part of our business back into our budgets as the previous proposed reforms had meant our current LTP had this part leaving the books mid next year.

For you, this won’t make a lot of difference, but for us and especially for the staff undertaking the immense amount of work an LTP takes, this has given a better path ahead.

Secondly we had a decision to make on whether to reduce the delegations to our community boards. 

This was a contentious topic that led to an overfull roster of public forum speakers and a packed public gallery. 

Unfortunately, many of the people who were there appeared under the misapprehension that this was a land-grab by council, which was entirely wrong. 

There will be a discussion and a consultation on distritisation later this year which will, in part, consider whether our practice of only applying the proceeds of asset sales (primarily land) to the Ward the asset comes from still serves us well, but that was not the discussion on Wednesday.

After hearing from the public and having a long korero around the council table, it became apparent to me that the vote was going to be a close one. 

I put it to your council that, given the public interest and the importance of the decision, a close outcome was not the best way forward given we could pause this decision to see what comes out of the distritisation discussion. 

The majority (10/2) saw it that way and so that decision is parked for another day but will be made this year.

Thirdly we discussed the way forward for the Cromwell Memorial Hall. 

This was held behind closed doors as there were commercial sensitivities to the outcome but details were made available to the public as of 8 am Friday, with the recording of the conversation also now available on the council website. 

Before I come to that though, I need to point out that a lot of the noise being made about the delegations discussion that we have paused involved the Hall with claims being made that, had we gone ahead with the lessening of the delegations, the council would over-rule the Cromwell Community Board and stop the Hall project, but here’s the interesting thing. 

Under the delegations as they currently are, we could have effectively done that on Wednesday had we wanted to, making the accusations being made totally wrong. 

This is something to keep in mind when misinformation starts to fly during the distritisation consultation later this year, which I am sadly sure it will.

The end result of another long discussion was that council has backed the CCB and the Hall will go ahead. 

The cost to build is eye-watering but will be mostly funded from land sales with most already in the bank and the rest coming within a few years. 

Outside grants will make up the remainder.

This was again not an easy decision; anything involving spending that sort of money isn’t, but it is also an investment in the future of not just Cromwell but the whole of Central Otago.

It was a very long day sitting in the Chair on Wednesday but the manner in which these hard discussions were held reaffirmed to me (not that it needed reaffirming) that I have the privilege of leading one of the best councils in the country.