The History of the Rates Control Team
July 20, 2010
Breakfast Brain Storming
On a November 2006 morning in Taupiri over a light lunch several farmers sat down to discuss, “Where to from here? Our concerns and hackles had been raised by the double digit and ever escalating farm rates from the surrounding councils.
It didn’t take too long to decide what to do but, “Who was going to bell the cat?” Who was prepared to put themselves forward? At first we thought that we would stand a team in a district council. But this plan soon dissipated when we realised how difficult it was to find candidates. We felt we might have a better opportunity at finding candidates using the Federated Farmers network.
I remembered how overwhelmingly successful the WEL Energy rebate platform was. It struck the right cord when they offered to rebate the profits back to the community.
We debated our name long and hard and took on a pledge to ensure rates increases do not exceed CPI and seek endorsements from popular middle stream representative groups.
It’s amazing the wide range of skills that a team contains, they came to the fore when the campaign began in earnest.
It ultimately all came together with 6 of the 7 candidates elected to the regional council…and then we learned what we had let ourselves in for!
Tony Armstrong
11/07/2010
