Property department questions

Neil Jorgensen.
Neil Jorgensen.
The Waitaki District Council's property department lacks strategic direction and has unclear priorities and limited resources, a council memorandum says.

The council's assets group manager, Neil Jorgensen, presented the memorandum to the council's assets committee in Oamaru on November 25.

The memorandum, based on a review of the department by "key stakeholders'', called for additional permanent staff and identified four main problems, stating: "Lack of planning is leading to firefighting, frustration and potential reputational damage.''

"Incomplete understanding is leading to ad-hoc decision-making,'' Mr Jorgensen wrote in the memorandum.

Crs Jim Hopkins, Sally Hope and Hugh Perkins raised concerns about the future of the department and the underprioritisation of the council's property department in council chambers.

After the meeting, Mr Jorgensen said the property department was "operating fine''.

He said the review discussed in the memorandum was to get councillors and the council's staff "on the same page'' about reconciling the council's unfunded property debt.

"We've got $9million of internal debt earmarked against properties throughout our district,'' he said.

"And council is keen to reduce that number down ... and to do that there are some properties council doesn't need to own and so we need to look at and identify what we can and should sell and then how we should sell that.''

The council's property assets were worth about $40million, not including reserves and roadways and similar infrastructure.

At the meeting Waitaki Mayor Gary Kircher said there had been some progress in the property department, which had been an issue since his first days on council in 2001 and "possibly before that''.

Cr Hugh Perkins said he was concerned about the underprioritisation of the department, which "seems to be the fate of property''.

Cr Hope asked to be "comforted at a number of levels and be given more information'' at the meeting.

At the meeting Cr Hopkins questioned whether there was something fundamentally wrong with the property department.

He told the Otago Daily Times later "that things weren't as crisis-ridden as the way it had been presented made it seem to me''.

"I think the report was very easy to interpret in the way that I did,'' he said.

The memorandum says the property department has a 1.5 full-time equivalent positions "gap'' in staffing levels, but Mr Jorgensen said progress could be made with current staff.

"What we said was we were going to keep boxing on and then we were going to reassess in some time to see if that gap still exists or not.''

The property department's debt was in large part due to the council lending $3million for the $10.2million refurbishment and redevelopment of the Oamaru Opera House in 2009.

At the time the debt was to be recovered from the profits of the Forrester Heights subdivision on Cape Wanbrow, which has not proceeded.

hamish.maclean@odt.co.nz

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