We talk to Dennis about his decision to come back for a third term on the board, what he feels he achieve in the last few years, what he would like to do and we also have a chat about what the work of a board members actually consists of.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability
Aaron: So you’re running again. Why is that?
Dennis: There’s a few things that we haven’t got finished that we had on the last three-year plan, and also now that I’m more retired than I was, I have a bit of time on my hands, so I just felt that there’s some things I could add value to.
Aaron: Give us some specifics. What are some things that you want to see happen?
Dennis: Well, we’ve been pushing to get the spatial plan done or a bit of structure plan, so we can understand where the community wants to see development and where they want to see growth, and also what sort of growth they really do want to see. We talk a lot about tourism, and the iHub is doing a lot of work in that area; is that what people want to see?
We’ve got residential developments going on in three areas now, and probably over the next 10 years that will start to increase. We’re also looking at some commercial stuff within those areas, we’ve seen a little bit of commercial stuff happening at Rangitahi; is that where people want it?
So, I think we need more input from the community on where they want to see the development happen and what development they would like to see. Because there’s other people saying we need sports facilities if we’re going to grow like we’re growing at the moment, we need a youth hub, and these are all exercises that are going on individually. They need to be, not forced together, but more cohesion, so that we don’t duplicate things.
We do have a lot of buildings in Raglan – such as the town hall, the Anglican Church hall, the Stewart Street Church Hall – and there’s potential there. I don’t know what the utilisation of each one of those buildings is, but can we enhance one of those? To give us something greater for the community than we’ve presently got, rather than try and start something off again from ground level that costs us twice as much money.
Aaron: I read the What’s On guide every morning and those halls are well utilised; to the point where people are starting to do things in the Te Uku Hall because they just can’t get a space in Raglan. That’s a sign that we’re actually running out of space for that sort of stuff.
Dennis: That’s what we need to draw out, then put a plan about where is the best place to do that? Raglan Naturally is working with Ngāti Māhanga looking at the Putoetoe Block for a youth hub, or something similar. So there’s lots happening and it’s matter of how can council and the community board help those developments going on and clearly understand what the total community wants, not just the little individual groups?
Aaron: Is there some existing plan in the council somewhere for what’s happening? What’s the future of the town?
Dennis: The have got maps showing the future growth of residential areas, but that’s about all it shows.
Aaron: Is that the 2070 plan?
Dennis: That’s part of it, but there are other maps as well, and Chris and I have got a meeting, hoepfully with James Fuller, hopefully before the next community board meeting, to get a better understanding ourselves of what’s involved and what council’s thinking is at the moment and how can we develop that a bit further in conjunction with the community.
Aaron: People in your position have been asking for a structure plan or a town plan – a spatial plan – for as far back as when Bob McLeod was the chair, probably before then. Are you confident that it’s going to happen? And do you have to just stay on the staff’s case to make sure it happens, do you think?
Dennis: There’s probably couple of answers to that. Yes, you do have to stay on the staff’s case. You’ve got to develop a relationship with the right people in the council and I think we’ve now got that, working with Megan and James. So I think from that point of view, we’ve just got to keep fostering that relationship and working with them. There is a cost to planning; for the council to allocate resources to doing it as well. They tell us that it’s quite expensive. I’m not sure why. But that’s something we need to pursue with them and then look at how much of it can the community do, or can the community board itself do, and the consultation process and things like that.
The other thing that gives me some confidence that we can achieve that in the next three years is that we’ve now got a change of CEO within council, and some of the community board chairs have met with Craig to talk about his aspirations. I’m quite confident that he’s got ideas that will benefit the communities within Waikato district and enhance them.
Aaron: Are those ideas in terms of how the council bureaucracy interfaces and interacts with the community?
Dennis: It’s right through the council. In the executive leadership team we have a couple of people leaving – that’s public knowledge that Tony’s leaving and Alison’s leaving – so we’re going to see a reduction in the size of the executive leadership team and more focus on responsibilities within those teams and how he develops those.
SoI think as long as we can keep working with Craig as a community board – he’s open to regular meetings with community board chairs, and he’s keen on how community boards can actually assist him in council as well. He’s also looking for more governance from councillors, rather than councillors getting involved in operational stuff to the same level or extent they do, at times. So if we continue to work with them, I think we can achieve that in the next three years, and sooner rather than later.
Aaron: It feels like it’s at least 10 years too late, but we can only do what we can do I guess?
Dennis: At the end of the day, we’re better off to get it now than not get it at all. And we do need some direction. I get it in the neck a little bit about the number of people that come in on the weekend; then you get people saying we want more tourism in Raglan – you’ve got to find the balance. There’s a lot of people like the vibe in Raglan as it is at the moment and don’t want more tourism. Then there’s obviously businesses in town that rely on the tourism and want to continue to see that grow. It’s a matter of finding a balance between the two and without some sort of planning and understanding of what the whole total community wants, including the rural people, we’re not going to be able to really say: ‘Well, we should head in this direction or we should head in that direction’.
Aaron: So that’s something you want to continue. Now, you’ve been on the board for six years; chairperson for the last three. What do you feel you’ve achieved over that time?
Dennis: There’s a few key things that we have achieved and the obvious one is the wastewater system and whilst, personally I haven’t been directly involved with that, because it’s been a project over 9 or 10 years, if not longer, Chris has certainly been involved in that and kept pushing for it and attending all the online meetings. Now we’ve got the new system up and running, and there’s really only the discharge part to be finalised.
Aaron: There’s a public meeting coming up because we’ve been asked to promote it. It’s a drop-in session at the library, on Wednesday 3rd of September.
Dennis: The other obvious project is the wharf project and all the revitalisation of that area, with the new pontoon that was installed. That’s enhanced that area significantly and it does look a lot smarter than it used to. There’s also the Putoetoe walkway – that’s now complete and operational. There’s the walkway from Raglan out to Wainui Reserve, that was done in the previous three years mainly, and also the walkway along the side of the aerodrome. So, there’s things that are happening out there and there’s things that are ongoing. We’ve started with the consultation for the Wainui Reserve development looking at a 30 or 50 year plan for that. The council has bought CKL on board to talk to the existing stakeholders, and then that’ll grow from that out to the potential stakeholders and the wider community, and get feedback on that, so that we can come up with a plan for Wainui Reserve – and what do people want to see there.
Aaron: I’m also intrigued about the smaller things that you might do – that you might have an influence on as a local. Where, for example, as a local, you might know something and you just step in and say we need to do this guys.
Dennis: You’re always ringing up someone about something. In particular, I’ve looked at some of the flooding issues we have, where we’ve got stormwater run-off that’s not running away, because we’ve got blockages; and the roading, which is always going to be ongoing, with the potholes around the place and the rural roads. So you’re getting feedback from the community all the time. You either ask them to put a notification in to the council, a service request, and get action via that, or if it’s more significant [other action may be needed].
We’ve got an issue at the moment with the lighting at Papahua – at the end of the changing sheds, the lighting on the bridge, the lighting on the Putoetoe walkway – which has been raised with me by some of the walkers that go out early in the morning and it’s pitch black and they can’t see anything. We’ve also in the last couple of weeks had concerns raised about one or two dogs, particular types of dogs whose owners who don’t keep them on the leash and the dogs are extremely aggressive. You get those sorts of things coming through all the time.
Aaron: Do you think people’s dogs are your responsibility?
Dennis: The dog bylaw sits with the council, so you can’t say, “no, we don’t want to know about it”. It’s when you get the same complaint about the same dog three or four times, that you can say we’ve got an issue, so we need to address it. Some of those things, I will encourage people to go on the council website and make a service request or I will actually talk to someone in council from time to time and say, hey, this needs to be sorted now.
Aaron: Has anyone complained about motorcyclists lately? There’s been some super loud motorbikes around I’ve noticed.
Dennis: No. I’ve had a few complaints about the burnouts in various locations.
Aaron: That’s been ongoing. What do you do about that? Tell the police?
Dennis: That’s all you can do – say, take a photo, get the registration, call the police.
There are some things we can assist with and some you’ve got to push back and say it’s out of our control and council’s control and the council can’t do much about it.
Aaron: At the moment, there’s a catch cry of getting back to basics. I’m hearing it a lot from the new candidates, but it sounds like the community see you guys as their leadership in all areas of life – by the sounds of that.
Dennis: You get some interesting discussions, about various things. I guess some of it’s just frustration from people raising things that might not really be a worry to them, but they know who you are, so they have a chat to you. They know you personally, that sort of thing.
You’ve got to sort of weigh it up a little bit and say; what can you do something about, what can’t you do and what’s just a general discussion?
Aaron: I’ve noticed that the taxpayers union, which is kind of a corporate front group, has got a very effective campaign to get the idea that rates are too high into the media and in perpetual discussion. So all the new candidates have turned up talking about this and, while this is an important discussion, and we’ve talked about the difficulty around people’s ability to pay rates over the last few years, how much of your actual time on the community board, do you spend setting rates?
Dennis: My rates have gone up 33% in two years. What blew me away when we had the revaluations of the house prices and rates went up significantly here – in fact I think mine went up something like 25% in one year – was there was very little complaint. I raised it with some people and asked: ‘Why aren’t you guys complaining?’ And they sort of shrugged their shoulders and said: ‘Well, what can we do about it?” It was just accepted. And that actually surprised me that there was so little pushback.
And then they’ve gone up another 10–11% this year. And again, very little pushback.
So, other than sitting in on some of the LTP [long-term plan] sessions and having some input there, and also doing a submission on the LTP plan, that’s really all [the community board has done]. Because the public haven’t really been too upset about it. Now everyone’s raising it, but no one’s coming along to the community board and banging on the table and saying this is ridiculous. Because they’ve got an audience here at the community board and a representative on the [executive leadership team] and two councillors, but people haven’t [complained] and that’s really surprised me.
Aaron: I guess what I’m driving at, for the benefit of the new candidates, a lot of whom are saying they’re going to sort out the rates, I reckon you spend about 1% of your time on that and 99% of your time on other things. What are you doing the rest of the time?
Dennis: You’re right. There are projects we do get involved in – Places for People, the wharf project, the refurbish on the main street – it’s those sort of things we can put some time in to. With the new CEO, he’s looking at how can community boards help council? And I think we need to get involved in more of those types of projects, where we can actually manage things.
The things where we can have an impact, we get involved more actively in. The other things, like the [long-term plan] and the rates, at the end of the day it’s all driven by the LTP [long-term plan], so we need to get more consultation on the long-term plan. Do people really want a roundabout at the end of Te Hutewai and Wainui Road? Things like that. And if they don’t, get them thrown out of the long-term plan and say that we’ll put up with the delay, we’ll put up with the delay on the one-way bridge if it’s going to save us our rates going up by 5%. So we need to get more involved in issues like that.
Aaron: Do you think people would be happier with the rates they pay if they had a better appreciation and more of a say on what it was being spent on?
Dennis: I definitely I think so. With Xtreme Waste, for example, one of the challenges is that I don’t think people really understand what service Xtreme Waste get paid for by the council and what service they provide over and above what the council pays them for. Because everyone, myself included, thought they got paid by the council to do all the things they do, but that’s not the case. They only probably get paid for less than 50% of what they actually do. So, for all the service they provide to the community, only about 50% is a reimbursed by the council.
It’s the same thing with the rates, we need to make sure people understand what’s in the long-term plan and why the rates are going up.
Aaron: One of the reasons the rates will be going up in the future is because this government decided to put the upgrade of the three water infrastructure back onto councils. We’ve had health problems from around the country – in Havelock North people died; we had sewage on the beach here; we had sewage on the beach in Auckland and down in Wanaka – because our three-waters infrastructure wasn’t up to spec. And now the government has said: ‘Councils, you’ve got to sort that out. You can get a bigger loan to do it.’ And now they’re also talking about capping rates, because rates are going up too much. This doesn’t work for me. Do you have an opinion on that as community board chair? Do you see capped rates as a solution or a problem?
Dennis: With a CCO [council-controlled organisation] looking after the waters, we’re going to have to pay for that service, so we’re going to be rated on the amount of water we use or something. So the question we put in our submission to the council is that we would expect rates to come down by the same amount that we get rated for the waters by the CCO, because I’d be pretty upset if I get charged a rate from the CCO for all the water services and sewage and potable water and stormwater work that they do, and then council continues to charge me the same rates for what they provide.
Aaron: The Council’s rating system is so complex, that when that change happens, there’ll be things going up and down all over the place, and the rest of the council rates calculation, and it’ll be almost impossible to say. Unless you’re like a financial analyst, right?
Dennis: Exactly. And that’s going to be the challenge. We’re going to have to be very, very careful, and council are going to have to be very, very careful there on how they go about that.
Aaron: So do you think bureaucracy has a tendency to want to expand itself? And do you think that the politician’s job is to keep an eye on that?
Dennis: Bureaucracy automatically expands itself. One of the chairs of the community boards has done the exercise of working out what the growth has been, what the salary rates for the leadership team are, what’s the overall salary increase been and what staff numbers have gone up by in council over the last three years? And it’s quite scary.
We’ve had an extra 100 odd staff in council now and we’ve got an executive leadership team of 11, and it just doesn’t fit with the size of the business. So, this is one of the things that the new CEO is going to address.
Aaron: Now I need to talk about you: I normally ask a bit about yourself as well. Can you just briefly say for the people who don’t know that much about you, about your family and career, personal stuff? What was your career?
Dennis: I grew up in Raglan. I arrived here when I was about 10 days old, I believe. So I grew up in Raglan and went to primary school here and intermediate. But I did go to Hamilton, to Fairfield College for high school, because I had different aspirations. I ended up doing an apprenticeship and going down the electrical engineering route, and spent 50 years in power station construction and maintenance. I started at the bottom and worked my way up.
Aaron: You were involved as a consultant on a project during the last three years. What was that?
Dennis: I got involved with Andritz and the refurbishment of Matahina power station. They needed some project management assistance because there were short of project managers at the time.
Aaron: So you’re doing project management work. Do you think that’s relevant? It feels like it’s relevant to council stuff.
Dennis: The project management side and the organisational side and the financial side – all of that fits with what we do on the community board to a certain extent. But basically, I’ve lived in the community for the majority of my life other than a few years at Huntly and a few years at New Plymouth during power station construction works.
Aaron: And family?
Dennis: Family. Yeah, all grown up. Three kids living in Australia and New Zealand, and grandkids in both countries as well. So, we get about a bit.
Aaron: I know your wife is very much into history. That’s where her name keeps popping up for me.
Dennis: She started off by doing her own family history and our family history, then she did some research on Te Uku’s Saint Paul’s Cemetery. Then it sort of grew from there and she did the regular cemetery. And she wrote the book for the centenary of the Anglican Church. And she’s working on a couple of others at the present time.
Aaron: I was just talking to Te Uku School earlier this week about the 150th anniversary, and her name cropped up there.
Dennis: Yes, they’ve come to her asking for some history on it, because she’s got quite a lot of history on Te Uku School and where Waitetuna School was originally, before it moved, and the changes in the names and things like that.
Aaron: The history of that school was very convoluted in the early days I’ve discovered. So I asked this question three years ago, about do you want to be the chairperson? And you are, so is that something you would do in the next three years? Do you want to be the chairperson again?
Dennis: I guess at the end of the day, I’m flexible on it if someone really wants to take it on. The only thing I’d say is that to do it properly, the chairperson needs to spend quite a bit of time at meetings, in particular the infrastructure meetings and council meetings. You really need to go to at least every second one of those, to understand what’s going on and where the council is heading and what the councillors are thinking. So it does take quite a bit of time, and it’s all in the middle of the day – 9 o’clock to 1 o’clock – and you really need to make sure you’ve got that time available.
I don’t believe I did that enough in the last three years, to be honest. Because that’s where you make the relationships, with the guys in the executive leadership team for example, and start to develop those relationships that are going to help make it easier for people In Raglan and for the community board to get things done. It’s just like any other business, it’s all about relationships.
Aaron: What do you get paid? About $8,000 or $9,000 a year to be the board chair?
Dennis: Before tax, so about $5,000 in your pocket.
Aaron: That’s collective with all your other income, I guess?
Dennis: With whatever other people get, your pension and other things, if you’re my age.
Aaron: I’m just mentally calculating – it would be very hard for someone who’s not retired or didn’t have independent means to actually do that job in the way that you’re saying it needs to be done.
Dennis: Definitely. Because you do need to commit the time. It’s the same with things in Raglan. You need to get out and understand what different organisations and people want. For example, I had a meeting with Charlie and Jacqueline the other day to talk about tourism. So, you’ve got to get out and meet with those people to understand what they’re trying to do and how can council help them?
Aaron: OK, I’m intrigued in this process of meeting all parts of the community. Have you discovered parts of the community that you were quite kind of surprised about and didn’t know much about?
Dennis: Yes, for sure. I didn’t know much about Xtreme Waste, but at the start of this last term I had a meeting with them to understand what they do, how their finances work, where they get their finances from, how much of it comes from selling recycled stuff and how much of it from council grants. You’ve got to do that to be able to understand how you can help them, and how the community board and council can assist them.
There are lots of other things like that, like the arts group, understanding what they’re doing and what people want to try and achieve within their organisations. Because [the community board has] the discretionary fund. It’s not a lot of money, but you need to know how best to allocate that across the community to help people get things underway? Be it Te Mata Hall, or the arts weekend or the country and blues festival.
There’s lots of things like that. Living out at Waitetuna where I was living before you don’t really get to understand what’s going on. Now I’m in Raglan, you sort of get to understand a little bit more about all those little wee things that are going on in the background, where people are just using their own initiatives and making something happen.
Aaron: There’s a lot of that here.
Dennis: It’s one of the good things about Raglan and one of the vibes about it – in areas like music and the environment there’s lots and lots of things happening. It sets the vibe for Raglan going forward. That’s why I said if we had a structure plan, a spatial plan, understanding what all those people want to achieve, then you can look at how do you put all that together in the growth of Raglan over the next 30-odd years.
Aaron: I believe there’s another community board meeting coming up.
Dennis: There’s some confusion about where that is, and I came across it on the website the other day saying Te Mata, but as far as I’m aware, it’s in Raglan. Wednesday the 10th in the supper room.
We had one planned for Te Mata, but we cancelled it because the refurbishment was going on. I’m not aware that we set another date for it, so we’ll run with Raglan, seeing as it’s the last one. Then hopefully the new board can continue to do what we’ve been doing, having one a year at Te Mata and one at Te Uku.
Aaron: OK, Dennis, thanks very much for coming in.
Dennis: Thanks.