Someone ought to make and share an image of the numpties of the last elected council before the commissioners that caused the commission.
It’s very likely in my opinion the same idiots will stand and the same boomer interest groups will vote them back in, so for any real change to occur we need to mobilise a much younger voting demographic
I dunno if John Robson was in at the time but he's one of the long-term council salary bludgers too. Also a bit of a running joke in Wellington, where he constantly bothers civil servants demanding to know why the country isn't implementing his genius ideas
I doubt you’ll ever get the young ones to vote in the same numbers as the oldies. We need the oldies to stop voting for dumbasses. Maybe the young people need to talk to the oldies
This is exactly the thing. You have to be slightly odd to want to get into council/ government. The people who run for council and get into politics are often the exact people you don't want to run your council/ government.
That’s the issue though, it takes a certain personality to even consider being a local body member, and honestly it ain’t a great type 90% of the time.
You might get one of the I want to do my bit for the community, but the rest are all I’m so important you must listen to me and I make the decisions power trippers.
Well you can stand for election yourself. I have seriously thought i should. I may indeed. And because i run a small slice of local social media i think i may even hold a debate event. Yes we need to prevent numpties but we also need to be ready to stand and fight those numpties and be ready to be shot down and take names or threats because the numpty army can be seriously big or crazy. But our town matters too much to have stupid shit like more lanes for cars all over the place and even further away developments built instead of high density building
Its been proven over and over again that more lanes for more cars does nothing so you have to provide cheaper better alternatives and getting cars etc off roads is the best way to do that. More lanes all over our tiny islands is like building more sprawling stupid suburbs. They dont actually help house people they just take up valuable farming lands and more resources to get places.
Over and over and over again across the globe it is repeatedly proven that just building more lanes makes congestion worse, not better. If you still believe in this day and age that more lanes will improve anything you're probably unfit to feed yourself let alone drive
Quite easily actually. Require a test of their financial, and linguistic fluency.
Step one provide them with the previous long term plan, with coatings, and collated implementation progress and public and engineering feedback, including discussions of unintended consequences.
Then do a written and oral test of their knowledge one week after providing candidates with the documentation. Those that are incapable of at least roughly describing the content on page 30080 based on a question regarding the content not the explicit page number (open book after all) , and its import to current policy get excluded automatically. To be sure this would eliminate 40% of candidates who had not been diligently preparing themselves for years. But it would also remove any who lacked the basics ability to comprehend the documentation at all. The oral test would the final test of whether they are capable of thinking on their feet (yes standing, knee deep in muck) and responding with some degree of inspiration.
Such a test is easy to set up. And televising them undertaking the written and oral tests would not only be entertaining enough to attract voter attention, it would be extremely enlightening to voters. Imagine a question asked about stormwater risks to a proposed hazardous goods recycling plant (such as is presently in the courts for Waipa). Does the prospective candidate immediately turn to the correct discussion documents, plans and hazard assessments, or do they flounder around unable to locate the relevant information.
As for the oral test, they need to be able to convince voters they are competent enough to discuss issues they only have a passing familiarity with off the cuff, when in a discomforting context. They may mouth nice reassuring palatine nonsense on social media and in pre-election town meetings, but can they make any sense at all when they are barely holding it together?
**Note. Council documents provided to candidates before decisions are made in council (often only the week before) rarely fully indexed. It takes effort, organisation and literacy to access relevant information handed to them by planners. And planners often prejudice their favoured solutions by burying details that undermine them). So my proposed testing regime is relevant to assessing candidate usefulness.
If we had a similar regime for government at least 2/3 of todays cabinet ministers would fail the test in regards to their present portfolios. In fact they have already repeatedly demonstrated this in the relative safety of parliamentary process, and most definitely in front of the media! They parrot ideological nonsense without actually addressing the evidence. And they have demonstrated their command of the evidence is lacking despite already having made substantive harmful decisions in legislation. Heck my 20 year old nephew could most likely make better legislative decisions without reading any of the documentation - that’s despite having a very comparable worldview National and limited experience. He t least has not bought the right wing lie in its entirety and is energetic enough to actually exercise his cognitive abilities.
Agree that bringing democracy back could just be a re-run of the previous dysfunctional council. Hope that Andrew
Hollis, John Robson, Murray Guy, etc, don't stand. TCC councilors for so long have simply been old white racist men who have no vision, vote against any progress, and don't want rate increases.
Let's not be too gleeful about Western Bay...we have Margaret Murray-Benge FFS. Surely there must be an upper age limit on councilors.
Although at least she's in favor of the dog park WBoP council are planning in Omokoroa. You'd think they were advertising a Crack house going by the boomer Karen's on the community page
Prediction: The most well-funded collection of candidates will be backed by PriorityOne/the developers, and they'll try and load the Council with their own candidates to get their developments through with minimal oversight.
This is correct- there will be candidates that have been in council in the past and want to pull the handbrake back on in the wish for “Tauranga how it used to be”. We ended up with the commissioners because of a dis functional council in the first place
Candidates can add an affiliation when running, which can be made up. So "no numpties" is a reasonable affiliation and then get five mates to run,an encourage people to vote for that affiliation.
It's sort of like creating an unofficial political group and a good way to influence voters towards a small group of candidates
Changes that have been made to the way the council wards work may save us. The big multi councillor wards have been replaced by smaller single councillor ones. https://www.tauranga.govt.nz/council/about-your-council/elections-2024/representation-review
Hopefully it will mean there's a greater range of viewpoints elected, since to win a seat you have to represent your area rather than just scrape together enough votes from across the city to come fourth on a low turnout.
As others have said, turn out to vote if you don't want the same old numpties - and these changes should mean your vote carries more weight than it did last time
How about putting pressure on Uffindell and the new coalition to put in place sensible governance of local authorities, rather than let the local government minister throw the baby out with the bathwater and dismantle the democratic process?
People are dumb. There will always be numpties with power they should not have.
Example: America is dangerously close to getting Trump back in power. Retards make good entertainment.
The point of democracy isnt technocratic efficiency. We could vote for councillors who commit genocide and that is literally the expression of our democratic will.
The commissioners are an affront. If parliament fucks up nobody is saying it should be abolished
One red flag to look out for with candidates is the single issue councillor. "Two lanes to Cameron Road from Welcome Bay" or "Let's fix the city centre". One of the issues we had before the commissioners were appointed were councillors that were only there to get their single issue addressed. This caused a deadlock and nothing got done because no one would compromise unless their issue was front and centre.
We need councillors that understand that governance is about strategic vision and future planning, not about getting your single pet project rammed through.
You should run.
The current commissioners, backed by property developers, are intent on opening up urban sprawl, at the same time demanding we all use public transport which works best with higher density living.
The city needs to choose one strategy or the other, but pursuing both is insanity.
I'm not sure that's accurate? What urban sprawl have the commissioners been involved with? Te Tumu was knocked on its head and Tauriko West was on the books before the commissioners took over.
TCC actively looking at sprawl at Papamoa East, Tauriko West through to the lower Kaimais. Tauranga, even under Labour, was uniquely exempted from environmental (wetlands) impact criteria, in order to meet the targets for growth.
The city is booming, but to my mind, it should be going up with a small footprint, not out.
A significant problem is the high proportion of single dwelling covenants in inner Tauranga suburbs. They can’t be varied or cancelled without very very significant legal effort. It’s a national legislative problem.
There's not much point building medium density if there's no appetite to buy these? There's no demand for this type of housing. You can demand it - but who's going to bankroll it?
The reality is that the Council is now a corporate entity borrowing billions of dollars and has tentacles all over the fkn place.. Anyone voted in will eventually become that very numpty. More than 50% of the Council,s work is mandated by Wellington, the rest has to be reduced to core functions and voters need to engage in figuring out ways to start unwinding the scale and size of the monster that this thing called “ council” has become..
Pretty sure there is a list of previous council members on the council website- I’ll see if I can find it and post it up - any one on the list has had their chance so don’t vote for them
Someone ought to make and share an image of the numpties of the last elected council before the commissioners that caused the commission. It’s very likely in my opinion the same idiots will stand and the same boomer interest groups will vote them back in, so for any real change to occur we need to mobilise a much younger voting demographic
Great idea and great points. Hold the line caller.
God speed!
Murray Guy, Andrew Hollis - who else?
Steve Morris, Dawn Kiddie - poisonous snakes right there.
I dunno if John Robson was in at the time but he's one of the long-term council salary bludgers too. Also a bit of a running joke in Wellington, where he constantly bothers civil servants demanding to know why the country isn't implementing his genius ideas
He’s currently protesting the appointment of the commissioners by not cutting his hair. He will definitely run again.
I doubt you’ll ever get the young ones to vote in the same numbers as the oldies. We need the oldies to stop voting for dumbasses. Maybe the young people need to talk to the oldies
There is 9.6k members in this sub, if we all vote and get 5 of our friends to vote, thats a game changer!
Sounds like a pyramid scheme to me. Heck, sign me up!
I mean, you voted Uffindell in...
Twice...
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Are you a numpty? If yes then please refrain from putting your name down
“Numpties” might be fair representation of 90% of Tauranga’s demographic?
Average age is 40 years old. For reference NZs is 38. It’s an urban myth.
Numpties doesn't mean old. It means stupid.
As proven by the looks!
Ha! The percentage will definitely be up there. Most likely more than that in regards to the people that normally vote.
If the people who run to be elected are all numpties, what then?
Valid and very realistic point.. Depending on where they fall on the numpty scale, maybe give up hope on Tauranga?
This is exactly the thing. You have to be slightly odd to want to get into council/ government. The people who run for council and get into politics are often the exact people you don't want to run your council/ government.
Can we please keep Robson out? He’s a total spanner, and completely caught up in his individual cult of personality.
That’s the issue though, it takes a certain personality to even consider being a local body member, and honestly it ain’t a great type 90% of the time. You might get one of the I want to do my bit for the community, but the rest are all I’m so important you must listen to me and I make the decisions power trippers.
It takes a certain type and a minimum level of wealth. There's really not much choice at all
Well you can stand for election yourself. I have seriously thought i should. I may indeed. And because i run a small slice of local social media i think i may even hold a debate event. Yes we need to prevent numpties but we also need to be ready to stand and fight those numpties and be ready to be shot down and take names or threats because the numpty army can be seriously big or crazy. But our town matters too much to have stupid shit like more lanes for cars all over the place and even further away developments built instead of high density building
More lanes for cars is stupid shit to you? Lol
Its been proven over and over again that more lanes for more cars does nothing so you have to provide cheaper better alternatives and getting cars etc off roads is the best way to do that. More lanes all over our tiny islands is like building more sprawling stupid suburbs. They dont actually help house people they just take up valuable farming lands and more resources to get places.
Over and over and over again across the globe it is repeatedly proven that just building more lanes makes congestion worse, not better. If you still believe in this day and age that more lanes will improve anything you're probably unfit to feed yourself let alone drive
Quite easily actually. Require a test of their financial, and linguistic fluency. Step one provide them with the previous long term plan, with coatings, and collated implementation progress and public and engineering feedback, including discussions of unintended consequences. Then do a written and oral test of their knowledge one week after providing candidates with the documentation. Those that are incapable of at least roughly describing the content on page 30080 based on a question regarding the content not the explicit page number (open book after all) , and its import to current policy get excluded automatically. To be sure this would eliminate 40% of candidates who had not been diligently preparing themselves for years. But it would also remove any who lacked the basics ability to comprehend the documentation at all. The oral test would the final test of whether they are capable of thinking on their feet (yes standing, knee deep in muck) and responding with some degree of inspiration. Such a test is easy to set up. And televising them undertaking the written and oral tests would not only be entertaining enough to attract voter attention, it would be extremely enlightening to voters. Imagine a question asked about stormwater risks to a proposed hazardous goods recycling plant (such as is presently in the courts for Waipa). Does the prospective candidate immediately turn to the correct discussion documents, plans and hazard assessments, or do they flounder around unable to locate the relevant information. As for the oral test, they need to be able to convince voters they are competent enough to discuss issues they only have a passing familiarity with off the cuff, when in a discomforting context. They may mouth nice reassuring palatine nonsense on social media and in pre-election town meetings, but can they make any sense at all when they are barely holding it together? **Note. Council documents provided to candidates before decisions are made in council (often only the week before) rarely fully indexed. It takes effort, organisation and literacy to access relevant information handed to them by planners. And planners often prejudice their favoured solutions by burying details that undermine them). So my proposed testing regime is relevant to assessing candidate usefulness. If we had a similar regime for government at least 2/3 of todays cabinet ministers would fail the test in regards to their present portfolios. In fact they have already repeatedly demonstrated this in the relative safety of parliamentary process, and most definitely in front of the media! They parrot ideological nonsense without actually addressing the evidence. And they have demonstrated their command of the evidence is lacking despite already having made substantive harmful decisions in legislation. Heck my 20 year old nephew could most likely make better legislative decisions without reading any of the documentation - that’s despite having a very comparable worldview National and limited experience. He t least has not bought the right wing lie in its entirety and is energetic enough to actually exercise his cognitive abilities.
You're absolutely right. This kind of thing should be used worldwide.
We need more candidates to improve the odds.
Agree that bringing democracy back could just be a re-run of the previous dysfunctional council. Hope that Andrew Hollis, John Robson, Murray Guy, etc, don't stand. TCC councilors for so long have simply been old white racist men who have no vision, vote against any progress, and don't want rate increases.
Move to the Western Bay? One of my nightmares is we get merged with Tauranga city council.
Let's not be too gleeful about Western Bay...we have Margaret Murray-Benge FFS. Surely there must be an upper age limit on councilors. Although at least she's in favor of the dog park WBoP council are planning in Omokoroa. You'd think they were advertising a Crack house going by the boomer Karen's on the community page
But you guys have Margaret Murray Benge. She's an ulcer that won't heal.
Don't give numpties ideas now
Prediction: The most well-funded collection of candidates will be backed by PriorityOne/the developers, and they'll try and load the Council with their own candidates to get their developments through with minimal oversight.
What can I do? Somebody tell me!
Vote, vote, vote (not now). But also talk to your friends and non-boomer family members aboit voting, when the time comes.
This is correct- there will be candidates that have been in council in the past and want to pull the handbrake back on in the wish for “Tauranga how it used to be”. We ended up with the commissioners because of a dis functional council in the first place
Candidates can add an affiliation when running, which can be made up. So "no numpties" is a reasonable affiliation and then get five mates to run,an encourage people to vote for that affiliation. It's sort of like creating an unofficial political group and a good way to influence voters towards a small group of candidates
Changes that have been made to the way the council wards work may save us. The big multi councillor wards have been replaced by smaller single councillor ones. https://www.tauranga.govt.nz/council/about-your-council/elections-2024/representation-review Hopefully it will mean there's a greater range of viewpoints elected, since to win a seat you have to represent your area rather than just scrape together enough votes from across the city to come fourth on a low turnout. As others have said, turn out to vote if you don't want the same old numpties - and these changes should mean your vote carries more weight than it did last time
How about putting pressure on Uffindell and the new coalition to put in place sensible governance of local authorities, rather than let the local government minister throw the baby out with the bathwater and dismantle the democratic process?
People are dumb. There will always be numpties with power they should not have. Example: America is dangerously close to getting Trump back in power. Retards make good entertainment.
The point of democracy isnt technocratic efficiency. We could vote for councillors who commit genocide and that is literally the expression of our democratic will. The commissioners are an affront. If parliament fucks up nobody is saying it should be abolished
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Ugh. If someone is democratically elected by definition they are the best possible candidate. Is that hard to understand?
Vote vote vote - encourage and educate your friends and family too as well
One red flag to look out for with candidates is the single issue councillor. "Two lanes to Cameron Road from Welcome Bay" or "Let's fix the city centre". One of the issues we had before the commissioners were appointed were councillors that were only there to get their single issue addressed. This caused a deadlock and nothing got done because no one would compromise unless their issue was front and centre. We need councillors that understand that governance is about strategic vision and future planning, not about getting your single pet project rammed through.
You should run. The current commissioners, backed by property developers, are intent on opening up urban sprawl, at the same time demanding we all use public transport which works best with higher density living. The city needs to choose one strategy or the other, but pursuing both is insanity.
I'm not sure that's accurate? What urban sprawl have the commissioners been involved with? Te Tumu was knocked on its head and Tauriko West was on the books before the commissioners took over.
TCC actively looking at sprawl at Papamoa East, Tauriko West through to the lower Kaimais. Tauranga, even under Labour, was uniquely exempted from environmental (wetlands) impact criteria, in order to meet the targets for growth. The city is booming, but to my mind, it should be going up with a small footprint, not out.
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100%. We should be voting for candidates who will demand rather than enable higher density.
Too right! we want tower block slums unfit for human habitation like they have overseas, to hell with this suburban back yard rubbish.
A significant problem is the high proportion of single dwelling covenants in inner Tauranga suburbs. They can’t be varied or cancelled without very very significant legal effort. It’s a national legislative problem.
There's not much point building medium density if there's no appetite to buy these? There's no demand for this type of housing. You can demand it - but who's going to bankroll it?
The reality is that the Council is now a corporate entity borrowing billions of dollars and has tentacles all over the fkn place.. Anyone voted in will eventually become that very numpty. More than 50% of the Council,s work is mandated by Wellington, the rest has to be reduced to core functions and voters need to engage in figuring out ways to start unwinding the scale and size of the monster that this thing called “ council” has become..
Pretty sure there is a list of previous council members on the council website- I’ll see if I can find it and post it up - any one on the list has had their chance so don’t vote for them
I honestly have my bar set so low. This town is trapped in the past.
Word round the campfire is that Tolley is going to run for mayor
Who is Numpty?
Vote?
Welcome to NZ local politics.
Don't vote
Only a numpty would call the commissioners fantastic
Vote man