I am heartened by the support that I received from many of you during the election campaign. I would like to really thank those who gave me their vote. I assure those people, and the people who may not have voted for me, that I will be working hard for you all to bring about change within Environment Waikato. While EW does do some good work, we can tend to overshadow the good stuff with the dopey things that we do.
Our handling of Pest Management is not impressive. Maybe the good support received by Clyde Graf is a reflection of this. Clyde was very generous and rang me on Saturday to congratulate me on my win at the polls. I will be using the wide support that he received to ram home that EW needs to do pest management in a better manner than what it is doing at present.
I firmly believe that we have some areas that need attention in the Regulatory role. I will be pursuing this in the coming term. I am a firm believer in the basics of fairness and natural justice and I have first hand experience that this is not always the case with EW. The community is entitled to fairness and natural justice. I have a horror of the “traffic cop” mentality. I do not want to see it being incorporated into our activities. If someone is deliberately flouting the law, then deal with it. And deal with it swiftly. However, in life one size does not fit all and things are not always “black and white”. We have a regulatory role but with that comes the responsibility to exercise that role with fairness and discretion.
EW has some real challenges in the next three years. There is a dire need to restrain rates. Water quality is a major issue. We have to put into effect the government/iwi River Settlement. Just making it work will be a difficult task, let alone funding it. We are still arguing the funding case to Government. Hopefully it will see sense in the end.
On the Coromandel we have the mangrove issue. I am determined to ensure that some staff and consultants do not turn a pest plant management issue into another unneeded industry at great cost to rate-payers.
I am always available to members of the community. Email me at simon.friar@xtra.co.nz. My phone is 0275 926.322 or you can ring EW on 0800 800.401 during business hours and ask to be put through to me. If you have a problem which you cannot resolve through the staff system, let me know about it. I will see what can or should be done.
Once again, thanks for your confidence in me and I look forward to working for you.
Simon Friar
