LGOIMA Requests

In response to your request dated 9 August 2019 regarding the number of communication staff and the budgets, the following are your questions and the responses.  For the purposes of the response the current reporting year is only 1.5 months and has been excluded from the response.
1. How many public relations and/or communications employees staff were employed* by your council for the periods**:
a. currently; 
b. in the last financial year;
c. in each of the previous four financial years; 
2018/19 2017/18 2016/17 2015/16
2 2 2 2

2. How many public relations and/or communications contractors or consultants or providers of comms/PR professional services were engaged by your council;
a. broken down as per same periods in  Q1
2018/19 2017/18 2016/17 2015/16
nil nil nil 1
The single engagement in 2015/16 was to produce a single strategy options report.
3. What was the total salary budget for employed staff, broken down for same periods in Q1?
2018/19 2017/18 2016/17 2015/16
- - - -
Because of the limited number of staff in the communications role it would be possible to identify individual salaries.  Council will not be releasing figures relating to salary. This information is being withheld under section 7 (2) (a) of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987.  If you disagree with the Councils decision to withhold this information you may make a complaint to the ombudsman under section 27 of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987.
4. What was the total salary/fee/etc budget for contractors or consultants or providers of professional services.
2018/19 2017/18 2016/17 2015/16
N/A N/A N/A N/A

 
5. How much were these staff paid broken down by salary band?
a. broken down as per same periods in  Q1
2018/19 2017/18 2016/17 2015/16
N/A N/A N/A N/A

6. How much were contractors, consultants,  providers of professional services paid broken down by salary band?
a. broken down as per same periods in  Q1
2018/19 2017/18 2016/17 2015/16
N/A N/A N/A N/A

7. Where contractors, consultants etc were paid by project, please specify the total cost of such projects
a. broken down as per same periods in  Q1
b. Noting any projects that cost the council more than $100,000
2018/19 2017/18 2016/17 2015/16
nil nil nil $1,487

8. How much in total did the council spend on advertising, public relations/comms campaigns or publications in the last financial year?
2018/19 2017/18 2016/17 2015/16
$27,031 $32,334 $38,119 $14,422
The majority of the amounts above were spent on compliance advertising (classified adverts) and regular stakeholder engagement (bi-weekly page in local paper).
a. How does this compare to the cost of this in the previous four financial years?
See above figures

In response to your request, below, we confirm that Manawatu District council has had no financial transactions with the New Zealand Drug Foundation.

We had no budget for the new website. We completed the project using internal resource and upgrading our old website to a new version, which incurred no extra costs.

1 DEM data - I have been in contact with Andrew Steffert from Horizons Regional Council and it seems that he has provided you with the 2018 Dense Match data, which is a comprehensive dataset, covering the whole study area.
2 Our District plan is available on our website:
In terms of the District Plan layers, I’ve included the following files:
a. Zoning
b. Overlays
c. Designations
d. Conservation Areas
3 Heritage Places are identified in our District Plan (Appendix 1) and (Schedule 4a) and I provide them in the following files.
a. HeritageFeilding - Schedule4a
b. Wetland_SAs - Appendix 1A & 1B (Please note that the supplementary lists are not mapped)
c. HeritageOther – Appendix 1E
d. ArcheologicalSites – Appendix 1F
(This is not cross referenced with the Heritage NZ list.)
4 Notable trees – From our District Plan
a. Trees – Appendix 1D
5 Landuse
a. Property_Landuse
A file of valuation areas with associated land use as from our valuations database.
6 Hazardous Sites – An extract from our Hazardous Activities and Industries List (HAIL)
7 Iwi Information – We do not hold extensive Iwi information. Statutory Acknowledgements of the Crown have been made and are referred to in our District Plan document. To assist you in identifying some of the sites and areas, I include 2 files (Iwi_AreasOfInterest and StatutoryAcknowledgement). They might not be comprehensive and should be treated as such.
8 Flood data – Our District Plan has 2 Zones related to Flood data (Flood Channel 1 and Flood Channel 2) and is provided as part of the District plan zones.
Further Flood data should be sourced from Horizons Regional Council.
I hope this could help you identify a suitable site.
Should you have any queries in this regard, please feel free to contact me.

I have received your request for information regarding the number of Infringement notices issued by Council Parking wardens or other staff in relation to un-licenced motor vehicles.

I can confirm for you that Manawatu District Council do not have authorised parking wardens and are not warranted to issue parking tickets for any parking offence, including offences involving the licencing or registration of vehicles.

Therefore no infringement notices have been issued in regards to un-licenced or un-registered motor vehicles by staff at Manawatu District Council.

In response to your LGOIMA request below, we confirm there have been no visits to China by the Mayor of Manawatu District Council in the past five years.

We refer to your recent request to Kasey Gibb, our Rates Officer, for information on some recently tendered parcels of abandoned land.

The information you have requested is below.

Valuation number:  1414001500  Grace Street Sanson                     Sale price  $18,000
Valuation number:  1383028901  Benson Road Beaconsfield         Sale price $6,500
Valuation number:  1386019100  Umutoi North Road Apiti             Sale price $1,500

At Manawatu District Council we do not employ parking wardens, as we do not have paid parking in Feilding. We are unable to reply to your questions.

In the last ten years Manawatu District Council have not had any official potable water restrictions. However, during the summer months the public are encouraged to conserve water. 
The following tips will help make water go further:
• Check soil moisture. If your soil is moist 10 centimeters below the surface, you won't need to water it.
• Water close to the ground at a rate the soil can absorb.
• Use a sprinkler. Established plants should only need 30 minutes watering once or twice a week in dry weather.
• Use mulch. Mulch protects your soil from the drying effects of wind and sun, and it can cut evaporation by 70 percent.
• Report and fix leaks.
Manawatu District Council prevents the need for issuing water restrictions by having multiple water supplies and reservoirs.
While staff can’t recall any restrictions between 10 and 50 years we can’t guarantee this.

a) A copy of your LGOIMA/Information Management/Public Information policies (if you have any)
MDC’s LGOIMA responses to requests are in accordance with the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987
b)The number of LGOIMA requests made to MDC per year for the last 5 years
1 July 2014 to 30 June 2019  =  431 requests 

To 30 June 2015 118
To 30 June 2016   84
To 30 June 2017   76
To 30 June 2018   84
To 30 June 2019   69

c)The costs incurred by council in processing these requests
We do not keep a record of time of average requests.  We would only charge for large requests that we know will take a lot of staff time to collate.
d)The amount of requests that have had a charge applied
Six have had quotes of fees sent to requester, but none has actually resulted in charges being made.
e)The amount(s) and hours charged for the requests covered in d)
We have not charged any requester for information requested.