Strategy - Vision - Stability

The Long-Term-Plan is Councils contract with both our community and the CEO.

Vision - the Plan sets out how the elected Council want's our city to be in 10 - 50 years

Mission - The plan sets out our communities' expectations for what activities should be delivered for our community and what our community is prepared to pay for those services.

Objectives - The Plan provides long term guidance to the CEO, who can then establish an organisation with the skills and competencies to deliver the activities and outcomes that, through your elected Council, our community has agreed.

Efficiencies and Effectiveness - Staff of an organisation are most efficient and effective when they have certainty about expectations (what staff need to deliver) and limitations (when outcomes are expected and what future budgets will be). Some Council activities repeat biannually, annually or biennially (systems and process are followed, staff capacity is managed), some projects take years of planning and may be delivered over several years (concept-design-tender-build-operationalisation). Chopping and changing expectations disrupts good business flow, wastes time and frustrates staff and our community. Big rates increase one year (allowing commissioning for multi-year projects and hiring additional staff), followed the next year by internal budget cuts stalls projects and staff have been made redundant - this type of civic leadership is not strategic it is costly, disruptive and totally disregards staff making it difficult to recruit as good competent applicants don't trust organisation's who behave that way.

Budget certainty - In the Long-Term-Plan Council sets out budget forecasts and future rates raises and receives feedback from our residents through public consultation. The elected Council through the Long-Term-Plan are meant to provide certainty by acting strategically making futuristic decisions not mucking around with or adding additional unbudgeted expectations with little warning or approving large budget increases and additional staff one year and then in the next (an election year) slash internal budgets and release staff to lower the planned rates increase. that's neither strategic nor sustainable.

In 2022, Napier City Council approved 22 unbudgeted items totaling $4.8 million in additional spending, causing significant rates increases in following years, is that the sort of poor leadership you want re-elected?

Rates affordability - First we need to understand what we're paying for; it's my plan to break the Long-Term-Plan into three components and costing these activities separately:

• the activities Council must do by law

• the activities Council does because no one else will

• the activities Council chooses to do but could choose not to do

By simplifying the LTP in this way your rates bill will be more understandable and as a community we can collectively (through the public consultation process) agree the level of service for each activity and therefore agree an affordable rate.

Leadership that lacks strategy lacks agility and fails to act rationally to opportunities.

In 2019, the newly elected Council under the Mayors leadership cancelled a $43M aquatic center tender which was waiting to be signed, staff had committed productive time to planning, land preparation and tendering. Staff then had to stop that process and spend considerable time (time is a considerable cost) and effort to review the state of the Onekawa Aquatic Centre to determine how much longer they could keep the Onekawa Aquatic Centre running and how much that would cost. So instead of investing in a brand-new ready to go facility, $8M was allocated to maintaining an end-of-life facility. Meanwhile the cost of building the new facility became $77M for the same facility at the Prebensen Drive site or $104M at the Onekawa site. Meanwhile the government paid for the 50-meter pool at the regional park, why didn't our community get a new pool like a number of others through the same process?

Instead of making a good strategic decision the mayor kept deferring, then appointed a costly citizens assembly to make that decision that you have voted elected members to make. The current Mayor has deliberately left a millstone around the neck of future Councils who will have no choice but to either close Onekawa without a replacement or build a new facility. The Mayor has recklessly cost our community millions in just this one activity

In the 2022/23 Annual Plan under the Mayors leadership approved a 12.2% ($5.4M) increase in employee benefits and in 2023/24 approved a further 15% ($6.7M) increase in employee benefits. Based on these approvals the CEO commenced employing staff. The 2024/25 Annual plan is absent from the available public records. In 2025/26 acting against the promised forecast rates increase which would have provided certainty to staff and project commitments, in election year, the Mayor demanded internal budgets be cut staff laid off and projects left in limbo.

Just like her promise to remove chlorine, would you trust her with another term?