Councils Holding the Country to Ransom

[Davo36]

Project Auckland: Commercial property may get a boost

This is positive too:

Project Auckland: Commercial property may get a boost

By Colin Taylor 12:00 PM Tuesday Sep 21, 2010
Part four of the Project Auckland series looks at 'Prosperity and Profile'

Towering commercial office blocks and large community structures define city skylines. Photo / Supplied



World class cities need big commercial buildings along with incentives for people who plan and develop them in order to thrive and grow.
It is, after all, the towering commercial office blocks and large community structures that define city skylines and Auckland is no different.
The provision of suitable buildings to house office workers and retail outlets is also a key enabler of economic growth. Without the edifices to house them, businesses can't employ more people.
For these reasons commercial property developers, owners and agencies within the Auckland CBD and waterfront area are hoping the creation of a Super City administrative structure will significantly reduce the current tangle of red tape and competitive in-fighting between multiple local bodies which is currently hampering development projects.

Source

[flyernzl]

Not going to happen, not in the real world.

You go to the council to get a permit or approval.
The council (eventually) issues you with the piece of paper.
At a later time something goes wrong and you sue the council.
You don't, of course. You actually sue the council's insurance company.

Like any insurance company, their immediate response is to trawl through all the paperwork and records looking for the 'out' so they can decline the claim and shove the costs back on to the council.

Therefore any council, under the current Kiwi ethos, needs to triple-check every little point and detail to ensure that absolutely everything is totally pin-prickenly 110% correct before the said permit is issued. This does and will in the future cause inordinate delays and excessive costs.

The only solution is to kill the belief that, in New Zealand, if anything happens to you it is someone else's fault and they should pay.

[Davo36]

Yep I have a lot of sympathy for that point of view actually. If I owned a business that was tasked with making sure the building code was complied with in my area otherwise the business could be sued, then I'd be very pernickity too.

This doesn't let the councils off the dreadful planning approach though. This is where all the hassles are. It's soooo open to their interpretation.

[partya]

Mistake by council leads to $360,000 in refunds.

Kapiti Coast District Council has admitted mistakenly overcharging developers and will refund hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees.
The council overcharged for subdivision development and reserves contributions between 2006 and 2009. It plans to refund about $360,000 relating to about 29 resource consents and 23 building permits.
Local development company Awatea prompted the refunds after taking up the matter with the council. Company director and lawyer Terry Killalea said the company budgeted $400,000 for development fees when he got resource consent two years ago for a 40-section, $3 million subdivision in Paraparaumu but the fees were increased to $620,000 when it was completed this year, in line with the council's revised fees rate.
"We were a bit miffed. They should not have changed the fees from the date of approval. There seemed to be a few anomalies."
The council's procedures were not consistent with what had been applied by other councils, including Wellington and Lower Hutt, Mr Killalea said.
The matter came before the council's corporate business committee this week. It supported a council staff recommendation to refund the overcharged fees – $271,230 plus GST for development contributions and $90,208 plus GST for reserves contributions.
"The overcharging for development contributions resulted from a policy of fixing the amount of contributions at the time of completion of the subdivision rather than at the time of application for a resource consent," council sustainable development manager Jim Ebenhoh said.
"While only one application for remission has been made so far, on this basis more can be expected as word travels in the development community. The council has a moral responsibility to proactively provide refunds of development contributions that it now knows were incorrectly assessed," the staff report said.
Reserves contributions were usually charged at the time of subdivision and under the district plan second or subsequent dwellings on a lot or commercial or industrial buildings on a lot could not result in extra charges.
"Recently it has become apparent some reserves contributions have been mistakenly charged on second or subsequent dwellings or new commercial or industrial buildings," the report said.
Wording in a brochure used by staff based on the district plan had caused the problem, the report said.
It pointed out that the income from both contributions in recent years had been higher than budgeted, so refunds would not create significant budget issues for the council.

[Davo36]

Takers up to the Very Last Minute

Council staff are grabbing as much cash as they can:

Council handshakes probe

By Kieran Nash 6:30 AM Sunday Sep 26, 2010
Local Government Minister Rodney Hide. Photo / Mark Mitchell



The Auditor-General has been called in to investigate lucrative golden handshakes being awarded to the chief executives of seven Auckland councils which are expected to cost ratepayers millions of dollars.
The Herald on Sunday has been told council bosses from Rodney to Franklin will receive redundancy packages with a combined cost of about $2.5 million.
Local Government Minister Rodney Hide said concerns raised about transparency of the redundancy packages by Labour's Auckland issues spokesman Phil Twyford led to the investigation.
"There is a big sensitivity about golden handshakes," said Hide.
"I don't have this information. It is held by the councils. The decision around redundancies is their responsibility.
"Because of the concerns raised by Labour's Phil Twyford I have asked the Auditor-General to have a look."
Twyford said he had been asking for details of the redundancy packages for months.
He said: "I've repeatedly asked Rodney Hide to front up and to reveal how much these golden handshakes have cost.


Source

[egan123]

Hi ERI, I have just completed a project in Milford, North shore city. At last, this also had 500 Dia concrete and steel reinforced piles to support the foundations, approx 30 under each dwelling.

If the builder builds exactly what has been consented for, then its not our responsibility to ammend the consent to place piles, this is the owner/developers responsibility, if the plans I had been given had no piles drawn, and htere was a earthquake, I would not be responsible for the resultant damage. I can only advise the owners and developers, the decision to add piles is solely theirs.

I would also advise to install sheet piling to prevent INUNDATION, but the cost would put people off.
We can build to reduce risk during a quake, (BUT) the owners must accept the cost.

then the columns were filled with concrete and rebar, and when set the normal foundations were built on this
the whole operation probably added an extra un-budgeted $50,000? to the cost of the new house

foundations can be built for virtually any location, but at a cost

if the leaky mess is anything to go on home owners will now be looking at ways to sue developers to rebuild with such foundations, developers will be looking at folding companies to avoid this, councils will be preparing legal teams to defend their sign off's and central gov. will be looking at what programs need to be cut and where taxes can be raised if they/we are left holding the very big bill can....

[muppet]

$15,000 to cut down protected tree

$15,000 to cut down protected tree



ANDREW GORRIE/ The Dominion Post
TREE CARES: Laura Flannigan says her stepson Ryan Hailwood cannot play soccer in their Khandallah front garden because of the risk from the norfolk pine.
A Khandallah family have had to fork out more than $15,000 to try to get permission from Wellington City Council to remove a dangerous tree on their property – because it is protected.
Laura Flannigan and her husband, Richard, approached the council to see if they could have a 40-year-old norfolk pine on their Box Hill property removed because it had started shedding massive cones and six-metre- long branches.
"We have had some big storms in Wellington over the past few years and branches keep falling down," Mrs Flannigan said.
"During a storm in January, when we were doing some renovations, one of the painters was walking up the property and these huge branches fell down and almost swiped him.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4235211/15-000-to-cut-down-protected-tree

[CJ]

"I don't know how that amounts to $13,000. We are writing a letter to the mayor about it because it is ridiculous."

Good luck - didn't Wellington just elect a Mayor from the Green party??

[essence]

Yeah, CJ, irony much.

It is ridiculous that this situation has occurred. Council staff would rather NOT make a positive decision to get the tree cut down (all those f-ing greenies!!) and run the risk of someone being hurt or worse still, killed. If that should happen, I can guarantee that the Council would absolutely deny all responsibility.

I agree that trees need to be protected, but the health and welfare of people are more important.

Common sense needs to be used - but we are dealing with a Council, so one excludes the other.

[muppet]

Hi essence

Patience is a virtue

.
That is what the Council is practising.
Which comes first
health and safety
or
heritage trees.

[essence]

Which comes first?? Health and safety, IMHO.

You can grow new trees.

[eri]

if it catches that norfolk pine disease that is killing most of the norfolks up north it will slowly die off from the top and become even more dangerous

if it catches it in 40years time, when it's almost twice the height, it will cost a fortune, to remove, wonder who pays then?

[graemeh]

Which comes first?? Health and safety, IMHO.

You can grow new trees.

I think their mistake was they didn't make enough fuss about the imminent danger, the council can pretty much sideline the resource consent process in this case and then do the paperwork later.

Thank goodness Wellington doesn't protect every tree like they do (or at least did) in Auckland.

[Davo36]

You Can't be a Hippie Anymore

World catches up with good life


They left behind the profit motive, religion, drugs and the complications of modern society to "learn to live together" - but they couldn't escape the Building Act.
Wilderland, an alternative community on the Coromandel Peninsula, has been ordered to evacuate and demolish all its dwellings because they do not meet the building code.
The community was founded on principles of freedom and world peace in 1964 and for decades residents experimented in gardening, building and liberated lifestyles.
But a neighbour recently called in the council's inspectors and now its interpretations on long-drops and improvised spiral staircases are before the Thames District Court.
"They went for broke on every little thing," said a community leader, Russel Mooyman. "It's just what this place wasn't about."
Mr Mooyman has a briefcase stuffed with hundreds of pages of legal papers, detailing the action taken by the Thames-Coromandel District Council under the Building Act.
A flash photograph taken straight down a long-drop is expected to look particularly damning in court.



Source


I think it's quite sad now how you can build very little yourself, everything has to conform. We've lost something here I reckon.

[TheLiberalLeft]

Davo, we'll turn you to the hippie side yet. Yes, very sad.