I am against spending ratepayers’ money on rearranging the deck chairs. The costs of Tasman’s sprawling infrastructure is much higher than those of Nelson’s comparatively compact system. While it would be nice to get somebody else to pay the price for our past mistakes of a failed growth strategy and our ill-conceived Waimea dam funding model, I doubt that anybody will and it would seem unfair to expect so.
So if ring-fencing three-waters-related revenue for three-waters-related expenditure remains as the only benefit of restructuring options, this can be achieved at a much lower cost through simple responsibility and integrity around the council table. I would focus efforts and expenditure on learning from past mistakes and coming up with a more efficient growth model for our district that reduces ratepayers’ high cost burden over time.