Hole opens in Rodney’s event budget fund

The former Rodney District Council’s accounting processes have left regional and local events in Rodney and Hibiscus Coast high and dry this financial year.

When Auckland Council advertised its annual contestable community funding programme earlier this year, applications from the former Rodney District Council area weren’t considered because the former council had made no provision for them during the transition process.

Council staff say this is because the District Council did not have a specific budget for regional or local events.
Both the Rodney Local Board (RLB) and the Hibiscus & Bays Local Board are calling on Auckland Council to immediately identify and reinstate the District Council’s legacy funding. Some say that the amount “lost” in the transition process could be more than $200,000. At least 11 applications totalling $101,406 were received from the RLB area alone.

RLB member Tracey Martin says the board is very, very angry that Rodney has been left in this position. She says Council staff were made aware of the issue months ago, but the board has been stonewalled in its efforts to get it resolved.

“It seems that because the District Council did not have a line item specifically for events, nothing went into the events budget for Rodney when the councils were amalgamated,” she says. “Whether or not it was an oversight on the part of former District Council staff, I don’t know. The fact is, that Rodney events have been left without funding that they are entitled to.”

However, Council’s events manager Charlotte Cuffe, who was formerly the District Council’s major events advisor, says it wasn’t something staff had any say over.

“There was no specific events funding under Rodney; the District Council only ever funded small events here and there,” she says.

Costs were allocated from various operating expenditure budgets, ranging from tourism to civil defence and transport.

Ms Cuffe says the figure of $200,000 is nowhere near correct.

“It would be more like about $5000,” she says. “Rodney gave very little to community events per se.”

However, former Mayor and current Councillor Penny Webster says the District Council was very supportive of events, but the difficulty was identifying it.

She confirmed that the District Council did not have one events budget.

“RDC staff were given a lot more discretion to use their budgets and waive resource consent costs to support events, and it is this spending that is difficult to quantify,” she says.

“The cancelled Orewa Santa Parade is a prime example. They’ve never needed a resource consent before, but this time they were told they did and by the time I heard about it, it was too late to do anything.”

The sorts of Rodney events funded in the past included the Manaakitanga Awards for tourism and economic development, the Mayoral Challenge, Rodney Live talent show, annual Civil Defence and Rodney Rural Fire Volunteers Honours nights, Kowhai Festival, Heart Walks and one-off festivals.

Ms Cuffe says that while the methodology for disbursing grants will be reviewed for 2012/13, there will be no legacy funding available for Rodney events this year.

In her report to the RLB, she suggested that it use its discretionary community funding budget ($25,110) to support community events in the current financial year.

Both local boards have deferred making a decision until such time as the funding from legacy events has been reallocated to Rodney.