From: Lee Vandervis <lee@vandervision.co.nz>
Date: Wednesday, 21 May 2025 at 1:18 PM
To: Ruby Shaw <ruby.shaw@alliedpress.co.nz>
Cc: Nicholas Smith <nicholas.smith@xtra.co.nz>
Subject: 2025 Election

Hi Ruby,

Ta for your interest in my election plans.

I am standing as an independent candidate for Dunedin Mayor and Council this October. With extensive business and political experience, I believe I am the best candidate available to help maintain and improve our quality of life. I pay for my own independent election campaigns, ensuring I work for Dunedin’s people, not for other party interests.

My track record includes uncovering Citifleet and mud-tank contract fraud, exposing millions lost in Jacks Point, Luggate, and Yaldhurst subdivision mismanagement, and opposing millions wasted annually on such planet-saving as underused cycleways and carbon-counting paperwork. As DCC Chair of Finance, I have driven transparency with clear debt and dividend graphs, secured a new focus on returning DCC company profits to ratepayers, and delivered an $11 million dividend this year—the first since 2015—to ease rates pressure.

My priorities are affordable rates, robust infrastructure, better value for rates, and a slimmer and more facilitating bureaucracy supporting local businesses and social organisations.

I am standing to serve Dunedin people and promote the major changes needed to make Dunedin sustainable – economically and environmentally. 

Kind regards,

Lee Vandervis
021-612340

47 Garfield Avenue
Roslyn
Dunedin 9010

From: Ruby Shaw <ruby.shaw@alliedpress.co.nz>
Date: Wednesday, 21 May 2025 at 10:22 AM
To: Lee Vandervis <lee@vandervision.co.nz>
Subject: 2025 Election

Mōrena, 

With growing talk about this year’s election, I’d like to ask you about any plans for re-election.

Are you planning to stand for council again? Are you planning to stand for mayor?

If you’re running, is it as part of a ticket or with party affiliation and with who?

If you’re not standing, why not?

If you haven’t made a decision, when do you expect to make one and what are you weighing up?

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Thanks for your time, my deadline is 4pm today,

Ruby

From: Lee Vandervis lee@vandervision.co.nz

Date: Monday, 28 April 2025 at 2:41 PM

To: Ruby Shaw ruby.shaw@alliedpress.co.nz

Subject: Re: Business South and Zero Carbon Alliance

Hi Ruby,

I agree with Business South CEO Mike Collins that the DCC Zero Carbon Alliance plan is “’very ambitious’ and there were concerns the time-frame to be zero carbon by 2030 was too short.”

In my view “very ambitious” zero carbon by 2030 understates the extreme and unaffordable proposed DCC actions, which come on top of a decade and thousands of pages of DCC CO2-reduction planning and carbon footprint calculating.

The costs of DCC carbon reduction paperwork already runs to more than a million dollars per year with no perceptible benefit for Dunedin citizens except perhaps warm planet-saving fuzzies for some.

Further impractical environmental sustainability spending while ignoring financial sustainability is worsening massive debt and rates increases while decreasing our ability to deal with real crises as they occur.

On top of the bureaucratic costs, the slower traffic, severe speed humps and reduced parking have all been collateral damage from DCC zero carbon 2030 ideology, with the previous DCC roading manager Nick Sargeant telling Councillors that “we have to get people out of their cars or the planet will burn.’

Cheers,

Lee

From: Ruby Shaw ruby.shaw@alliedpress.co.nz

Date: Monday, 28 April 2025 at 12:48 PM

To: Council 2022-2025 (Elected Members) council.2022-2025@dcc.govt.nz, Lee Vandervis lee@vandervision.co.nz, Mayor mayor@dcc.govt.nz

Subject: Business South and Zero Carbon Alliance

Kia ora,

I am working on an article about Business South declining the DCC’s invitation to join the Zero Carbon Alliance and wanted to give councillors an opportunity to comment on the story.

Business South chief executive Mike Collins said the organisation declined to join because it was already part of the Sustainable Business Council.

He also said the invitation was declined because the plan was “very ambitious” and there were concerns the timeframe to be zero-carbon by 2030 was too short.

He felt a 2050 goal was more appropriate.

What is your reaction to Business South declining the council’s invitation?

What impact will it have on the council and the ZCA’s sustainability goals? Is it a blow?

What do you make of Mr Collins comment that the plan is too ambitious?

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Thank for your time, my deadline is 4pm today,

Ruby

Ruby Shaw

Reporter

Allied Press

This power is used as a last resort when all other attempts to get the rates paid have been exhausted.”

I know of someone personally who had his home put into an auction process by a court order to recover rates owed because he had not paid his rates for many years.

DCC staff assured me that this was very rare and that forcing rates payments was only ever a last resort.
It turns out that Rating Act provisions also allow Councils to forcibly extract rates payments by simply getting your bank to pay them and add the cost to your mortgage, and that currently there are over 200 Dunedin homeowners having their rates forcibly paid in this way.
“In Dunedin, 218 demands were recently sent to banks and lenders for unpaid rates of $763,595 in the 23-24 year.”

The full story is on Stuff
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360641227/councils-take-millions-dollars-mortgages-unpaid-rates

There are some inaccuracies in the Andrew Simms summation as below, but in general I agree that the DCC should not proceed with its Smooth Hill landfill because of its unaffordable financial and environmental implications as well as a long history of poor management and planning of DCC landfill services.
These implications have long been obvious to me and I have voted against building Smooth Hill whenever the opportunity to vote and debate against it have arisen.

If you Google NZ Government Funding for Maori there are 15 pages of Google headings to search through to get an idea of the scale of it.
https://www.google.com/search?q=NZ+Government+Funding+for+Maori&sca_esv=da447278f1366733&sxsrf=ADLYWIJZVoXt2gZR66ugYDASwhzZHns1ig:1728803084089&ei=DHELZ8eRBfiX0-kP9cHv6QE&start=0&sa=N&sstk=Aagrsuj9W84hMmi2QmmqH1nKF1zzKznbTMKn5sgpl9Z6bkKBLSumG1tMM2-g2vMcj9z6of6p3j62FA95hbh4uBYgCJwhoeU5DDFc4J1MTf4ryUyzvcNpSHjbGkdXjmLEJfSJOn9hy3ZdguhWb_uOqF3to87-j7VorFA-sjOfXYy64LbNx-urkO1bq1pgKQYKWvR-Top1LSM-EPPAnxf3GnZKoUqft4OtqYIIW2_ogN-6hpLoxrzZQYeQv19OkPLXshOLSCwe4XkKG4C2PCz5BFbeG5U4SQ1-DBH4dgL8dAxU7WoIo5cWJkB1L2Df&ved=2ahUKEwjHx9qt5YqJAxX4yzQHHfXgOx04FBDy0wN6BAgFEAQ&biw=1262&bih=679&dpr=2

The answer that came back was 58.7%.

Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich and Cr Lee Vandervis sought to stop further cycle-ways spending.

However, their motion to have all further planned Dunedin City Council cycleways funding reviewed — because of ‘‘very low and declining use’’ of cycle lanes — failed.

This despite DCC’s own cycleway counter evidence of low and falling cycleway use.

This is the DCC cycle-count data that Cr Walker and others have long claimed would show increasing cycle usage over the last 4 years, when there has actually been a decline in cycle lane usage from 2022 despite an increasing Dunedin population…

NZTA might be forgiven for thinking it is still winter here in Dunedin, but spending our road taxes on such patronising road ‘safety’ advertising is surely a distracting waste of our money.

DCC Economic Development Agenda Data spoken of positively by many Councillors

when in fact every significant comparison of Dunedin data compared to New Zealand averages data showed Dunedin to be below average, in many cases well below average.

Look at how low Dunedin Average House Values are compared to the NZ average.

The hard 2023 data ran for scores of pages in our agenda but my speech summary notes show the significant standards.

Most elected representatives are in serious denial when trying to highlight good news from these latest figures, and have accused me of talking Dunedin down when highlighting the hard facts.

I believe that clearly identifying problems is the necessary first step to solving these problems.

This seesaw was $50 on FaceBook Marketplace at the time, and seems much better value to me.

finding out how this $600,000 was spent is as below.

From: Sharon Bodeker <Sharon.Bodeker@dcc.govt.nz>

Date: Thursday, 21 November 2024 at 4:25 PM

To: Lee Vandervis <lee@vandervision.co.nz>

Subject: FW: LGOIMA request

Dear Lee

Further to your email below, please find attached invoice details of the George St playground as requested. I note that some of the items on the ENI invoice to Isaac have been redacted as not being costs relating to the playground.

I apologise for the delay in sending this information to you.

Kind regards

Sharon

From: Jenny Lapham <Jenny.Lapham@dcc.govt.nz>

Sent: Thursday, 24 October 2024 3:32 p.m.

To: Official Information <officialinformation@dcc.govt.nz>

Subject: FW: LGOIMA request

From: Lee Vandervis <lee@vandervision.co.nz>

Sent: Wednesday, 16 October 2024 11:18 p.m.

To: Sharon Bodeker <Sharon.Bodeker@dcc.govt.nz>; Jenny Lapham <Jenny.Lapham@dcc.govt.nz>

Subject: LGOIMA request

Hi Sharon and Jenny,

Can you please forward to my email detailed copies of original paid invoices for the George street playground that amount to the publicised $600,000 cost of the playground.

Kind regards,

Lee

Michael Laws has independently asked questions that I have long been asking [and have had racist accusations from other Councillors and Code of Conduct complaints for my trouble] but Laws has gone further to uncover the extent of ‘relationship funding’ with Maori in Local Government across NZ…

 
Check out this page https://theplatform.kiwi/podcasts/episode/michael-laws-why-did-the-otago-regional-council-pay-usd5-3m-to-iwi

Central Government funding of Maori is in addition.

If you Google NZ Government Funding for Maori there are 15 pages of Google headings to search through to get an idea of the scale of it.
https://www.google.com/search?q=NZ+Government+Funding+for+Maori&sca_esv=da447278f1366733&sxsrf=ADLYWIJZVoXt2gZR66ugYDASwhzZHns1ig:1728803084089&ei=DHELZ8eRBfiX0-kP9cHv6QE&start=0&sa=N&sstk=Aagrsuj9W84hMmi2QmmqH1nKF1zzKznbTMKn5sgpl9Z6bkKBLSumG1tMM2-g2vMcj9z6of6p3j62FA95hbh4uBYgCJwhoeU5DDFc4J1MTf4ryUyzvcNpSHjbGkdXjmLEJfSJOn9hy3ZdguhWb_uOqF3to87-j7VorFA-sjOfXYy64LbNx-urkO1bq1pgKQYKWvR-Top1LSM-EPPAnxf3GnZKoUqft4OtqYIIW2_ogN-6hpLoxrzZQYeQv19OkPLXshOLSCwe4XkKG4C2PCz5BFbeG5U4SQ1-DBH4dgL8dAxU7WoIo5cWJkB1L2Df&ved=2ahUKEwjHx9qt5YqJAxX4yzQHHfXgOx04FBDy0wN6BAgFEAQ&biw=1262&bih=679&dpr=2

My questioning of how we could vote for a Plan with more than a dozen illegible pages and scores of untranslated Maori words and phrases was met with various Councillor rebuffs, including:
Cr Walker’s claim that although much of the public print version was too small to read our computer version could be expanded to make it readable. If this was true for Cr Walker’s computer it was certainly not true for mine as this exploded screenshot of part of a significant page proves.
How can you debate leave alone approve a Ngai Tahu Climate Change Strategy when you can’t read it?

Cr Garey said of my complaint of all the untranslated Maori words and phrases that I should up-skill my knowledge of Te Reo so that I could read and understand such agendas.
My long experience of DCC Councillors is that none of them have the comprehensive Te Reo ability to understand much of what is in this agenda Item 11, and in any case DCC agendas are supposed to be able to be read and understood by the general public.

Embarrassingly for me, the DCC went ahead and voted to approve the entire Implementation Plan for Te Taki Haruru despite not being able to read significant parts of it like the Climate Change Strategy, and despite not getting any translations of the many Maori words phrases and headings used throughout.

As PM Luxon said yesterday
“”Look, I fully understand the frustration. It’s also frustrating for a government that’s been in power for 10 months and inheriting this mess as well.
This is a project that started at $1.2 billion, went to $1.6 billion, we’re putting another $300 million in to bring it up to $1.9 billion.”

From: Lee Vandervis <lee@vandervision.co.nz>
Date: Friday, 4 October 2024 at 9:43 PM
To: Sandy Graham <Sandy.Graham@dcc.govt.nz>, Council 2022-2025 (Elected Members) <council.2022-2025@dcc.govt.nz>
Cc: Executive Leadership Team (ELT) <elt@dcc.govt.nz>, Communications <comms@dcc.govt.nz>
Subject: Complete drainage victory over the most persistent days of heavy rain Dear Sandy and your Team,

Having traversed most of lower-lying South Dunedin without driving through any puddles before nightfall last night and again this evening I believe it is not too early to congratulate you all on a complete drainage victory over the most persistent days of heavy rain in my memory.

There has been no repeat of the $175 million in property damage and the misery of a thousand+ flooded homes as in the similar 2015 rain event, this time with the surface flooding in South Dunedin’s usual low areas mostly contained and diverted.
Notwithstanding still more rain for the next few hours, I believe the potential crisis has been averted, with traditional detention areas like Bathgate Park and the Oval already showing less surface water and only the very low section of Botha street and Surrey st still having water right across part of the road. The video camera man at the Hillside end of Surrey street seemed rather dejected having little to report.
This below was the only bit of Tainui’s Botha street with ponding at 6pm this evening.

No doubt staff will have an enormous clean-up operation with slips etc in the coming days, but they have already succeeded in reopening slip/tree-blocked parts of Peninsula roads and all the houses I have seen have maintained dry floors.
There has been only a fraction of the sandbagging required compared to 2015 when my Landcruiser had water coming in under the door sills as I delivered sandbags needed in many South Dunedin Streets and saw families having to wade away from their flooded homes to higher ground.

All drains and mud-tanks appeared to cope well with enormous and continuing quantities of water efficiently pumped away, and even the often leaf-blocked Queens Drive mud-tank just south of Olveston was draining efficiently.

I look forward to the eventual debriefing on what went so well and what might still be done better in the future, but in the meantime look forward to an anxiety-free night of sound sleep.

Best regards and thanks for so many jobs well done!!
Lee

when in fact every significant comparison of Dunedin data compared to New Zealand averages data showed Dunedin to be below average, in many cases well below average. Look at how low Dunedin Average House Values are compared to the NZ average.
The hard 2023 data ran for scores of pages but my speech summary notes above show the significant standards.
Most elected representatives are in serious denial when trying to highlight good news from these latest figures, and have accused me of talking Dunedin down in highlighting the hard facts.
I believe that clearly identifying problems is the necessary first step to solving the problems.

A significant opportunity to address our unsustainable debt and to get some income from our companies has been lost today, with enormous risks going forward, including being overwhelmed by debt and possibly losing Aurora’s value to a government centralising scheme which makes more sense for connected lines companies than it did for disconnected water businesses.

Wednesday, 25 September 2024

Aurora Energy not for sale

Aurora Energy is not for sale.

The Dunedin City Council decided this afternoon to retain the company.

The vote was passed 13-2 and greeted by a ripple of applause from a packed public gallery.

In the end, any momentum for a possible sale collapsed under the weight of strong public feedback against it.

The resolution to keep the company was moved by Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich.

Feedback from residents had been clear, he said.

“They are simply not ready to sell. Perhaps in the future that might change, but not today.”

Mr Radich said many ratepayers viewed the company as a strategic asset and they wanted it retained for the long term.

It would grow in value, he said.

However, the choice would not ease pressure on rates and it might force tightening of the belt, he said.

People against the sale of Aurora Energy attended the council meeting today. PHOTO: CRAIG BAXTER

A good financial case for a sale had been made, but it could not proceed in the circumstances.

Cr Lee Vandervis said it was the wrong decision, as it  would increase debt and rates.

The matter would need to be revisited “in a few short years”.

Cr Marie Laufiso said the decision was a test in values.

She rejected economic neoliberalism, including privatisation of assets.

Crs Sophie Barker and Christine Garey said public feedback had been loud and clear.

“This is democracy at work,” Cr Garey said.

Aurora distributes electricity to Dunedin, Central Otago, Wānaka and Queenstown.

Any sale price had been tipped to comfortably exceed $1 billion.  This would have allowed the council to set up a diversified fund worth hundreds of millions of dollars, providing an alternative revenue stream to rates.

Dunedin deputy mayor Cherry Lucas said this could have reduced risk for the council.

Aurora was profitable, but it would require a significant capital spend into the future, funded by debt.

Rates would not have to increase as much if the council sold the company, she said.

“People are already finding it hard to pay the rates.”

Cr David Benson-Pope said world markets were volatile and confidence about reliable returns coming from a fund had to be open to question.

Had the public voice not been so clearly articulated, the outcome of the vote might have been different, he said.

Aurora is the largest trading company in the Dunedin City Holdings (DCHL) group, which is owned by the council.

DCHL had recommended a sale.

The council pitched a proposal to the public in March this year for a possible sale. It received more than 750 submissions and held a public hearing in May.

There had since been workshops run by DCHL and council staff, while public opposition to a sale remained determined.

Cr Bill Acklin thanked DCHL for its professionalism.

Cr Acklin said he had initially bought into the idea of selling the company because the council was in financial strife.

Listening to the ratepayers was his first duty, he said.

Cr Andrew Whiley said he ended up coming to the conclusion retaining Aurora was in the best interests of the city.

He would not be against a partial float of the company.

Crs Lucas and Vandervis voted against the resolution to retain the company.

grant.miller@odt.co.nz