Analyst Larry Mitchell reflects ...

My recent item reporting some of the data and financial information concerning that excellent Council Kaipara District Council was written to dispel the myth -- promoted by Rodney District politicians -- that Kaipara is a "dog".

THIS IS NOT what the data showed.

But this personal "Them verses Us" battle gets us here in Puhoi -- nowhere -- for the issue is this....

With excellent leadership and outside of the square thinking WE (not Them or Us) could become part of a new unit of local government that takes its leads from best practice with delivery of low-cost high-performance rural styled local government.

If we have the will and the wit then it can happen ... but it will it not happen if all we look to is our existing dysfunctional Rodney model  ... with its high-rates high-cost high-debt urban style.

The only other point -- and it is crucial and was largely missed at the Puhoi meeting last week -- is this...

Remember the ALAMO![See below] For if we do not make the Waiwera River the northern boundary of the super city then we are sunk for our Puhoi heritage and rural character. Perhaps I did not express it very well at the meeting but the natural Northland boundary, the beginning of a topography that screams rural/totara/special character and which is not suited to mass development (a la Auckland metro) is the  WAIWERA RIVER.

Such a boundary stops no one from shopping in Orewa even  borrowing a library book (for a small fee at Orewa) or of setting up a super library at Warkworth ... to say nothing of the savings on your rates.

All Puhoi submissions (due by Friday!) must include this demand to keep us out of the Super City ... and free from Rodney's crazy plan. Can anyone honestly still believe that the Hibiscus Coast will stay out of the super city plan. Not me!

[See Alamo] as ... ' We shall fight them on the beaches (make that the riverside ... Waiwera's) ... We will never surrender etc '

-- Later Larry.