Submission
Which option do you prefer?
Further comment
When asking for submissions how did the sale of the ratepayer owned Aurora suddenly become the councils preferred option when no mandate was given to our elected Councillors by the ratepayers to make this so . Such an important sale of a strategic asset should be an election issue and not one that has been drawn up by the vested interests on the council boards. No doubt this has been promoted by these unelected board members mid term so it can be sneaked through with minimal fuss and minimal debate . Before 1990 our network was well maintained ,had less than quarter of the the outages it has now and electricity price's were cheap. . Corporisation led to inexperienced accountants and business men running the organisations, ignoring engineering advice . I was one of a group of four who wrote to the ODT and had meetings with the mayor and other councilors in 1998-99 warning them that the board and management were cutting maintenance and capital spending to the extent that it would take huge expenditure to bring the network up to standard in ten to twenty years and this would lead to a push for privatisation. The Board poured scorn on this saying maintenance hadn't been compromised and there was no intention to privatise at all. They were wrong on and now the Board of the council companies , who ignored the repeated warnings that they were mismanaging the asset, are recommending its sale. No doubt there will be nice bonuses and even further directorships for those involved but it ignores the rights of the ratepayers who own it. Just as happened in 1999 and exposed by Richard Healey in 2016, expert opinion will no doubt be ignored and the directors will take ratepayers down a course of high electricity prices , more outages and no control of a strategic asset . If you doubt what is best look at Wellington where the asset has been privatised and resold four times, network reliability is bad and their line charges are among the highest in the country. Compare that with the nearby ,well run Waitaki Board that is trust owned and operated, is well maintained and makes returns to its customers in the form of rebates. The proposed price of around $500 million is a joke . With around $750 million invested in the last 7 years and the reticulation already existing the value should be at least $2 billion.I implore Councillors ,if they truly believe in democracy to delay any sale to the next election. Then it can be debated properly and the ratepayers (the owners) can have a real say by electing candidates that have told us where they stand on the issue, instead of being decided by unelected vested interests who have stuffed it up in the past and are about to really stuff it up now . Finally once its sold what do we sell next to get out of trouble. The Town Hall perhaps. Cheers Graeme Jeffery
Supporting information
Submitter
Submission id number: 1040569
Submitter name:
Graeme Jeffery
Organisation
Former Dunedin Electrictity Department, Dunedin Electricity and Delta Cable jointer/Linesman. 38 years