Hearing for Hokitika seawall extension pending
Further work on a project to extend the Hokitika Seawall is currently "on hold" pending further consultation.
However, a broad range of resilience work for Hokitika was canvassed during the 2024 annual meeting of the Hokitika Rating District Joint Committee this week.
Just one member of the public attended the midday meeting in the Westland District Council chambers on Monday.
However, the committee was warned the next step to progress the Hokitika Seawall extension would be "contentious" with high public interest.
West Coast Regional Council chief executive Darry Lew said they were now awaiting a hearing date to further that process.
It would include retrospective consent for the emergency works on the rock buffer north of Beach Street, following the storm in April.
Lew said a 50/50 split in submissions either for or against the proposed seawall extension showed strong feeling either way.
"This consent process will be contentious."
But at this stage he had put the consent process "on hold to consider other matters".
This was partly to allow the new group manager responsible for the project's oversight to get up to speed.
That manager would start in about a fortnight but the process now needed careful consideration or even a pre-hearing process to "perhaps settle matters" before a formal hearing, Lew said.
Mayor Helen Lash said a local residents group formed to advocate against needed to be approached "with a very open mind".
"They have done their homework," she said.
Lew agreed.
However, at this stage the only people across the engineering details was council's own consultant on the matter, he said.
"Nobody has talked to the community about this (yet). I'm confident that my new group manager will do a good job on this," Lew said.
The joint meeting agreed to a total special rates strike of $101,562 in 2024-25.
Sluggish progress on the next, Gibson Quay, stage of the Hokitika River flood resilience work - due to KiwiRail requests, and the next phase for new CBD protection from the sea inundation risk up from the Hokitika River were also aired.
Council staff defended their approach to emergency work following the April storm impacting near Beach St.
Council engineer Jordon Mandry said they had contacted joint committee members about the need to immediately deal with the rockfall risk to beach users.
The risk "was quite significant" and it was undertaken under emergency work provisions allowed under the Resource Management Act.
At the same time restoring the rockwork exactly was conservative given the pending seawall extension proposal.
Mandry said they recommended continuing the permanent seawall consent process at which point the rockwork could be built to the appropriate design standard.
Lash asked what the risk in April had been perceived to be.
Acting catchments group manager Shanti Morgan said their thinking "evolved".
"The risk to beachgoers was the main one. We were dealing with King tides."
At the same time communication over it "could have been better" and the risk to land still remained.
Lash said her big concern was the alignment of the emergency work with the future potential project.
Mandry said the April repair work "was a temporary solution".
"There's no point in doing something unless you go down the track with permanent rock wall building."
Lew said the risk to children was very real given the big seas in April had undermined some of the rockwork.
"With very little pressure, some of that big rock would have turned on a small child - inevitably people do move across to play on rock."
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$700,000 mistake left to fester at Coast council for three years
By local democracy reporter Brendon McMahon:
A billing mistake that saw a debt of just over $701,000 sit on the West Coast Regional Council books for three years should never happen again, according to the head of its finance committee.
Council this week congratulated itself on the recovery of long standing debt in the past few months, the ongoing rebuild of its finance management system, and a pending report back on four internal audits driving the rebuild.
However, Risk and Assurance Committee chairperson Frank Dooley (pictured) said the error made back in 2021, leaving a $701,718 debt on the council's books, still needed to be cleared up through the council's annual reporting.
Caused by a "clerical error", the debt was indicative of the council's previous dysfunction where a billing mistake was left to fester instead of being proactively followed up, he said.
"It was a double up in an invoice.
"You just don't follow up three years later," Dooley said.
A public outcry in late 2023 spurred a flurry of activity by council to sort out its rates and debt systems after some ratepayers were overcharged by up to 300% in the first installment for 2023-24.
It has already adopted a new system to chase up external debt and internal audit reviews are currently underway into:
* cash handling
* credit card and fuel card expenditure
* procurement (capital and operational)
* rates setting and charging processes.
Chief executive Darryl Lew said the findings should be reported directly to the committee by June.
He said it reflected "a significant body of work" with new actions out of it needing to align now with the 2024-34 long-term plan and a planned revision of council's committee structures, he said.
Councillor Peter Haddock said council's commitment to do a fix up had been quite a resource commitment when it was "running low".
But it was essential to rebuild the organisation.
Councillor Peter Ewen said that was significantly helped by changes at the top in the past year, with the chair replaced and a new chief executive.
"A lot of the progress that has come about is because we now have communication between the chair and the chief executive.
"It's made a hell of a difference," Ewen said.
On May 16, Dooley told LDR the $701,718 dated back to a claimant being invoiced twice and the amount then being carried over in council's debtors' ledger.
He said there had been no inquiry until recently about it when it became clear the amount was disputed.
The "mistake" had made a $700,000 impact on council's bottom line.
"The impact of that $700,000 reversal will probably be in the annual report."
Dooley said at this point he was unsure if that particular mistake could have been repeated.
"I don't really know but that's why you have to drill down debtors on a regular basis - that's when you pick it up.
"Errors have to be investigated and corrected, and that hasn't been happening," he said.
Council was now working with its auditors to build new systems including ensuring accurate rendering of rates debt.
"We're starting to drill down, asking are they accurate or not?
"I've got a lot of confidence now … we're putting in place the appropriate procedures and controls so we can manage this on a day to day basis and make it effective."
Dooley said part of the issue had been inadequate staff numbers - despite some question around an increase in staff at council.
"If you don't have those people doing the right job, it creates inefficiencies, and creates a massive cost to the ratepayers - every time we make a mistake it costs.
"I'm really pleased about the progress."
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