While Weston Kirton was rallying for the Mayor position in July 2022, he made a few statements which stand out, see NZ Herald article here.
This one is rather interesting considering council has just reached an all time low on trust & transparency, which was voiced last Thursday evening
Kirton said as mayor he would rebuild trust by resetting how the council communicated with the community and re-establish council committees to drive accountability and transparency.
"The Ruapehu District needs a mayor that listens, works collaboratively and acts with integrity."
Here we can see, the first evidence of Westons master plan. Weston had an ambitious goal to fix a housing issue (that is evident country wide, not just in our region), but the execution was wrong, the place is wrong & the transparency and honesty is non existent. It appears Weston has taken things into his own hands by forcing the community and rate payers into a corner we now find ourselves in.
"Housing, homelessness and the lack of rentals are growing problems in our communities. As mayor, I will work to establish a new community housing trust to get more houses built in our district, on both council and private land," he said.
It had been frustrating to see Ruapehu miss out on around $50m from the Provincial Growth Fund allocations in 2020 because of a lack of "shovel readiness" to build more houses, he said.
Clive Manley on the other hand, has had similar views, clashing with previous Mayor Don at a LTP meeting, where its clear Clive doesn't listen to Mayors or Councillors and does what he wants to do. This was also apparent at a recent Council meeting, watch below... and this isn't the first time he hasn't listened to direction.
Clive has a good skill, to waffle & babble, into long winded side quests, so not to answer a question directly. He rather just give his reasoning & perception for his actions, but never directly answering a question. Clive was told "we've heard enough from you Clive, sit down", he was also told to give direct answers to questions or yes/no answers, yet he continued with no actual answers.
We're at 5 days since the record setting public meeting, and the community has heard nothing at all, which leads me to believe that they are just hanging on as long as possible for the resource consent to go through, so the conditional sale to Kāinga Ora of rate payer land, goes through so it cannot be reversed.
The sale or gifting of the land, would be an illegal activity in my view, in regional councillors (both ex and current councillors) and in the view of the public.
Ruapehu District Council have a policy of significance which can be downloaded here
The issue is deemed highly significant by the community or large parts of the community
The issue is controversial, will impact on the lives of people and may have political consequences
is likely to be reported on widely by the press
Capacity to conduct a significant activity district wide is compromised
We also believe that the impending lawsuits could trigger operational budget costs, with court proceedings possibly going into the millions of dollars plus damages costs.
Clive is told that Council would be at their highest scale level 5 right now of the policy of significance,, however Clive says he disagrees
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