Napier's new $41m pool proposal- the headache that won't subside

Young Napier City Council hope Jake Brookie at the controversial site proposed for Napier's new aquatic centre. Photo / Paul Taylor

Residents of Napier are possibly experiencing deja vu at the moment.

A community group is preparing to take Napier City Council to court, claiming the council did not adequately consult the community.

This time it's over the $41 million swimming pool, less than a year since the last ruling was made over a Napier City Council consultation issue.

In August 2018, the High Court ruled that NCC did not adequately consult on the issue of Easter Sunday trading.

Local Government expert, Andy Asquith from Massey University's School of Management, said it was not surprising that the council was being challenged again over its consultation efforts.

"One of the big weaknesses with all local authorities in New Zealand is that they don't consult.

"The legislation requires them to do certain things which they do, but very few do anything above what the legalisation requires and the legislation is designed to minimise consultation."

He said the legislation which governs councils needs to be updated, and central government needs to take local government more seriously, in order to improve New Zealand's councils.

In general, chief executives had too much power in local government in New Zealand.

"Mayors have got diddly-squat power, all the power in the town hall in Napier sits with (CEO) Wayne Jack."

Another expert - Dean Knight , from Victoria University's Law Faculty - said he did not believe the two cases could be equated, as Easter trading was a process issue, and the pool was a substantive issue.

"It's a quite different one to the Easter Sunday.

"I'm not sure we can read much into a council having two court cases in a year as being anything significant."

He said the pool case would likely be more difficult to argue for the complainant, because it appeared to be a concern about the basis of the decision, rather than the specific consultation process.

"If the complaint is that there is flawed information, or that there is inadequate information and that's coloured, or made the conversation with the community not as rich as it should be, that might have some legs."

The Easter trading decision was taken to court in July 2018 by Dr Robin Gwynn, who argued the Napier council had not undertaken specific consultation with unions and churches, but had with business.

That case cost Napier City Council roughly $61,000-$30,728 in legal fees and $30,637 covering Gwynn's costs.

A NCC spokesperson said the council was unable to comment due to the ongoing legal case.

In an earlier statement acting mayor Faye White - who has the top job while Bill Dalton takes time off to recover from a stroke - said they were disappointed to hear of the case.

"It is very disappointing that the proceedings threaten to undermine the democratic process to date.

"The council is taking advice about how to best protect the interests of the council and its community, including from serious financial damage."

The new pool currently has $41.3 million allocated to it under the Long-Term Plan.

This could be increased to $44.3m, but the final $3m has not been approved by council.

Young local body candidate Jake Brookie wants the Napier City Council to take a lead from a velodrome decision three years ago and back off from its split-decision aquatic pool vote until a new council is in place.

Challenging the theory that young people aren't interested, the 25-year-old started his council Taradale Ward campaign on May 14, two months ahead of the opening of nominations.

His research led him to reports of a June 2016 council meeting which put off a vote on business plan in the investigation of the controversial proposal for a velodrome until after the local elections later that year.

In the report, 14 months after the concept was introduced as part of a vision document, then-mayor Dalton said: "We're not going to rush this job. We want to do this job thoroughly."

If the velodrome was to have gone ahead should have been progressed by a council that supported it, he reasoned, but the project, estimated to cost almost $23m, was rejected by the new council the following year.

By contrast, the option of a $40m-plus Prebensen Drive swimming pool, instead of upgrading the current, long-serving and central Onekawa aquatic centre site at less than half the cost, emerged in April last year and was given the green light just 12 months later.

White had the casting vote after the 12-member council was split 6-all.

An artist's impression of the new Napier Aquatic Centre. Photo / File

Brookie says the same principle of deferral as used in 2016 should have applied again, particularly because of the enormity of the cost, the controversy, and the split in the council.

"My biggest concern is the consultation," he told Hawke's Bay Today, reiterating a Facebook post late last week in which he said: "To me, this has become more than a decision about swimming pools, instead it has become about how council consults with people."

Earlier this week a public meeting of about 70 mainly over-60-year-old residents, gathered to support the new Friends of Onekawa Aquatic Centre Society and its legal challenges to the council's April 17 decision.

The Friends, through lawyer Martin Williams, have lodged papers with the High Court seeking to an injunction to halt the council tendering process, which is aimed at settling a contract next month, and a judicial review of the process the council used in making the decision.

Brookie attended the council's extraordinary meeting about the pool back in December, and says: "I heard many councillors say that they didn't have all the information when they voted for the Prebensen Drive pool, and some said that they weren't told what they were voting for."

"I also heard many respected submitters claim that the information in the consultation document wasn't balanced and favoured the new pool over the old one, with one councillor calling the document 'biased'," he said.

"Because of this, and the fact that submissions for a 50m pool might not have been received with an open mind, and a 7000-strong petition was disregarded, I welcome the idea of the process being examined by the court," he said.

Responding to meeting-goers' concerns about getting younger people involved, in a decision society chairman Graham Sutherland said it was "all" about the future generations.

Brookie says young people are concerned about issues facing the city.

"They are very concerned about what's going on," he said. "But they're are confused about who talk to about it. They don't know the difference, for example, between the council, and the regional council."