Hood aerodrome: unanswered questions

The following article, which the Wairarapa Times-Age published this morning under my byline, began as a letter to the editor and just sort of grew. It's unlikely to be of much interest to readers outside the Wairarapa.

From the outset, there have been unanswered questions surrounding the proposal to spend $17 million upgrading Hood aerodrome. It wasn’t clear who was driving the initiative and we weren’t told, at least initially, how much money Masterton ratepayers were expected to contribute.

As time has passed, some answers have been provided. It took several days before Masterton District Council chief executive Kath Ross told the Times-Age the council would contribute $7 million on top of the $10 million coming from the government. Information subsequently provided to me by Ms Ross’s office suggests the council’s actual commitment will be $4.2 million, with an additional $2.75 million to be sought in the form of “grants, fees, charges and co-investment” – whatever that may mean. 

Not only does it all seem a bit woolly, but ratepayers are entitled to wonder why these figures weren’t disclosed at the start. After all, the people of Masterton will effectively be paying twice for the upgrade, both as taxpayers and ratepayers. And the key question which remains unanswered is: why?

Unfortunately the council remains evasive. Concerned that no convincing case had yet been made publicly for the Hood upgrade, I made an Official Information request to the council for documentation relating to the project.

My request sought all relevant information, including any business case prepared in support of the upgrade.

What I initially got was a letter providing some additional superficial detail about what the council proposes to do, but conspicuously omitting any cost-benefit analysis or substantiation of the project’s promised economic benefits.

Not satisfied with this response, I sought further information. I asked specifically for minutes of council discussions relating to the upgrade and for budget forecasts covering projected returns and/or deficits. Under the disclosure provisions of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act, this information should have automatically been provided in response to my first request, but wasn’t.

I fared slightly better, but only slightly, on my second attempt. This produced the disclosure that there were no minutes relating to the decision to seek Provincial Growth Fund money for the upgrade, for the strange reason that councillors never formally adopted the proposal.

I was told the draft application to the PGF was “shared” with councillors in workshop sessions (how thoughtful of council officials to keep elected members in the loop). But not being regarded as official meetings, workshops happen out of the public view. So we have no idea what (if any) debate took place around the council table, or how rigorously (if at all) the proposal was assessed.

This seems an odd way to conduct council business, given that Masterton ratepayers will be required to contribute at least $4.2 million. That’s a lot of footpaths.

There was further discussion during a “Zoom briefing” of councillors under the Level 4 lockdown in April, but again no record was provided of what was said. It’s almost as if the lockdown was used as an excuse for the lack of transparency and due process.

The material provided to me by the MDC further revealed that councillors considered an item relating to the Hood development in a public-excluded session last year. All detail of that discussion was withheld on the ground that it might prejudice the council’s commercial operations.

Similarly, in its previous release of material to me, the council provided a briefing document supplied to local MPs and councillors, but blacked out all relevant figures relating to council investment in the project on the basis of “commercial sensitivity”. That document “conservatively” estimated economic benefits of $248-307 million from the Hood upgrade but didn’t explain how those figures were arrived at. For all we know, they could have been plucked out of the air.

As part of the second release of information I was also provided with a poorly written “executive summary”, of anonymous authorship, outlining the supposed costs and benefits of the upgrade. As with previously disclosed information about the project, this document was heavy on optimistic assumptions and positive-sounding buzzwords, but light on substantive data.

The executive summary concedes that the benefits of the upgrade are “uncertain” and positive outcomes are “not guaranteed”, in which case one might ask why the council is committing millions of ratepayer dollars to the project. Commercial risk is the realm of the private sector, where people gamble with their own money.

Most conspicuously, the documents fail to reveal who will use the improved aerodrome/airport and where the projected financial returns, assuming there are any, will come from. The projections rely heavily on the hope that scheduled air services will resume – but there’s no indication that any airline is eagerly waiting for Hood to be improved, and nothing to suggest that upgrading the aerodrome will magically make it profitable. Not one of the cheerleaders for the project has identified a single new user.

All we’re left with, after going through the documents released by the council,  are several mysterious references in the executive summary to “facilitated projects” at Hood, all detail of which was blacked out – again, on the grounds of commercial confidentiality.

We can conclude from this that the council is probably involved in negotiations with an undisclosed party or parties regarding some form of commercial activity at Hood, not necessarily related to passenger services, and has been persuaded that it’s the best if the public is kept in the dark.

Those with suspicious minds might wonder whether the council has been sweet-talked into bankrolling an ambitious, aviation-related project in which ratepayers could end up carrying the commercial risk – in which case we’re entitled to know what our officials are signing us up for.

Otherwise the rationale for the upgrade remains unclear. A cynical explanation is that taxpayers and Masterton ratepayers are bankrolling a Labour Party strategy to win the Wairarapa seat back from National.

Mayor Lyn Patterson’s column in the Times-Age last week did nothing to clarify things. Presented with another opportunity to mount a convincing case for the Hood upgrade, Ms Patterson resorted to more airy, feel-good platitudes about putting Masterton on the map.  

We’ve still seen nothing to indicate the upgraded aerodrome will generate an economic return and thus justify the investment of ratepayers’ money that might be better spent on other services or facilities. And perhaps even more disturbing is the impression that councillors have been passive spectators in whatever is proposed.

Best-case scenario: the council is secretly talking to a prospective Hood user who promises an economic bonanza but wants the ratepayers to pick up the tab. Worst-case scenario: both the council and the government are taking a massive punt with our money and we can only cross our fingers and hope for the best. Either way, the facts should be put before us. 

Is the public bankrolling Labour's bid to reclaim Wairarapa? It certainly looks that way

Jacinda Ardern spent Friday campaigning in the Wairarapa. Labour is targeting the National-held seat and is confident it can win.

The party’s candidate, list MP Kieran McAnulty, is an ambitious, energetic local with a high profile. In 2017 he got within 3000 votes of the sitting MP, the lacklustre Alastair Scott, and this time he faces a first-time National candidate, farmer Mike Butterick, who is not well known.

Although it’s essentially a rural electorate, Wairarapa has been held by Labour before – most recently by Georgina Beyer from 1999 till 2005 – and an influx of new residents, many of them from the Labour stronghold of Wellington, could help tilt the scales in Labour’s favour.

Ardern’s charm offensive on Friday gives context to the otherwise puzzling announcement in July that the government will invest $10 million in an upgrading of Masterton’s Hood aerodrome, a facility currently used mainly by topdressing planes and recreational flyers. That sum will be augmented with a multi-million-dollar contribution from Masterton District Council. (I say multi-million because the actual sum isn't clear. Council chief executive Kath Ross told the Wairarapa Times-Age in July that the council would contribute $7 million, but information subsequently released to me by her office indicates the actual commitment will be $4.2 million, with an additional $2.75 million to be sought in the form of "grants, fees, charges and co-investment". Make of that what you will.)

The announcement of the Hood upgrade came out of the blue and makes sense only when seen as an enticement to vote Labour. In other words, it’s a prime example of the old-fashioned pork-barrel politics most of us thought had been consigned to history decades ago.

The entire process behind the government’s decision to fund the upgrade, and the buy-in by the district council, has been strikingly opaque. It’s not clear where the initiative came from and no substantive business case or cost-benefit analysis has been made public. The probable reason is that none exists.  

Masterton ratepayers have seen nothing to indicate the upgraded aerodrome will generate an economic return and thus justify the investment of ratepayers’ money that might be better spent on other services or facilities. As I pointed out on this blog in July, not one of the various cheerleaders for the project – neither McAnulty, Grant Robertson (who announced it), Ron Mark nor Masterton mayor Lyn Patterson – has identified a single new user of the upgraded aerodrome.

Scheduled air services in and out of Masterton have been tried twice in the past 20 years. In both cases they were abandoned because they made no money.

In an attempt to establish the economic rationale (assuming there is one) behind the Hood project, I twice sought information from Masterton District Council under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act. The responses added little to what was already known, reinforcing my suspicion that both the government and council have committed public money to the upgrade based on airy assumptions that are not backed by any substantive business case.

Among other things, the council provided me (but only after I approached them a second time, after a totally inadequate response to my first request) with a poorly written “executive summary”, of anonymous authorship, that was heavy on positive-sounding buzzwords but had all the substance of candy floss.

The documents fail to reveal who will use the improved aerodrome/airport or where the projected financial returns, assuming there are any, will come from. The projections rely heavily on the hope that scheduled air services will resume – but there’s no indication that any airline is eagerly waiting for Hood to be improved, and nothing to suggest that upgrading the aerodrome will magically make it profitable.

Perhaps most disturbingly, there’s nothing to indicate that Masterton district councillors subjected the project to any rigorous analysis or even detailed discussion. No minutes, no formal resolutions: zilch.

I can only repeat what I wrote on this blog on July 20: in the absence of any compelling case for the upgrade, we’re left with no other conclusion than that it’s a brazen vote-buying exercise - one that Masterton ratepayers have been suckered into subsidising by a council that displays little regard for responsible financial stewardship and even less for transparency.