Brian Rudman: Snoop on the neighbours for free with the city's bargain deal

Auckland City is appealing to all our baser instincts with its special free offer to snoop through its files and discover what our neighbours are up to. Usually one of these neighbourhood reports, which outline everything from plans to renovate to dreams of running a brothel in the back room, costs $95.

But until July 17, we can order through the internet as many of these reports as we desire for free.

I immediately succumbed, though whether it was pure nosiness that drove me, or just the opportunity to get something worth $95 for nothing out of the council I'm not sure.

A bit of both, I guess, as it was for several of my colleagues who soon joined in the sport.

Living within nostril twitch of several restaurants, I seemed to have got the best deal as 18 pages of information about licences and permits and consents jetted back into my inbox.

There were references to new decks and grease traps, the granting of liquor licences and an execution warrant on a pin oak. A swimming pool and an en suite got the tick.

What did puzzle me is, who did the arithmetic for this offer. At $95 a pop, it seems an expensive giveaway for a public body, particularly when you're told "you can order as many reports online as you wish between 1 and 17 July".

In other words, if you had the desire, you could go snooping all around the city at the expense of the ratepayer.

Mind you, the rapidity with which the compiled report popped up in my inbox suggests the process is automated. Which then raises the question of the $95 fee. Is it a fair price?

Coinciding with the free offer, the city announced a rise in some service fees from July 1 "to ensure they fairly reflect the cost of providing those services".

I find a charge of $95 for the print-out of a simple database search far from a fair price. But if it is, how are the bureaucrats planning to cover the cost of this special offer? Put up my rates?

Talking of strange Auckland City accounting practices, we're waiting with bated breath to see what new figure-juggling the bureaucrats are going to come up with next week when they appear before councillors to defend an earlier report, misleadingly skewed in favour of paving the city's footpaths in black chip concrete rather than red.

In late May, councillors demanded a new report, after revelations in the Herald that the focus groups retained to discuss the issue and the councillors had been misled by official reports that red chip paving was considerably more expensive that the black chip, when they cost about the same.

The focus group was told red chip would cost $166,000 a kilometre compared to $110,000/km for black chip. What the focus group did not know was that the red chip price included cost of replacing all vehicle crossings into homes while the black chip price did not.

Councillors were similarly misled in a report which declared the officials' "recommended option", in bold capitals, was black chip at $121,200/km, rather than red chip at $159,823/km. Only in the depths of the report, where not all councillors are known to delve, was the fact that only the red chip price included vehicle crossing costs.

The officials now say existing concrete crossings can remain when black chip paving is used, because white concrete blackens with age and blends with the footpaths.

But with red chip footpaths, blackening driveways will give a stripy effect, so they all have to come up and be replaced with red chip crossings.

Next week it seems likely the officials will try to play down getting caught out on the cost issue by falling back on the traditional bureaucratic backstop, the desire for order and uniformity. Their desire for black chip only will be all about getting a consistent look and feel in the city.

A black, bland, blah look you might say. To think that these are the same bureaucrats who beaver away writing reports littered with buzz words such as vibrant and visionary and dynamic.