Six phone calls later

Six uneventful phone calls later I’m about to give up. But I can’t give up because nothing will happen. But I can’t keep try either because I’m not actually getting anywhere. Nobody wants to answer their phone. Nobody wants to return their voicemails. And nobody wants to reply to emails. Could try the main reception desk, but they’re seemingly on strict orders to filter anyone with a legitimate and constructive query. Pretty dire situation really. Especially considering I’m trying to make contact with a city council in the midst of a major rebuild.

It’s no secret that Christchurch has been through one hell of a time over the past couple of years. Fatalities, destruction, and ultimate chaos are merely a snapshot of the stress and emotional anguish the local people have had to cope with. Even now there are people without homes, a large chunk of the city remains fenced and derelict, and a quick drive around the scarred and rippled roads is enough to put anyones back out of kilter.

But while the earthquake was a heart wrenching disaster and the people have coped with an utmost form of resilience, we’re now more than two years down the track and the city still displays its battle wounds around most street corners. Sure, recovery from a disaster of this magnitude will take time – lots of planning, lots of numbers, lots of consenting, lots of rebuilding. Not a process that will be made any easier though considering the incompetence on display within the isolated four walls of council headquarters.

I know this because I’m currently going through the consent process for a new industrial building. In normal circumstances this process might take six to eight weeks. But in today’s circumstances that timeframe can be doubled, at a minimum.

The reasons for this are varied, plentiful, and rarely admitted.

Firstly, the council is simply lacking the suitably qualified resources to deal with the rapidly increasing workload. It wasn’t going to take a brain surgeon to realise that consent applications were going to increase as the rebuilt gained momentum. But somehow the council missed that memo and steamed on with inadequate resource to only now realise their fatal oversight. Supposedly they’re now sending mayday signals to other councils around the country – attached with their own consent applications that they don’t have the ability to handle themselves.

Secondly, I’m told by a longstanding (and formerly loyal) council employee that leadership within the organisation is poor to dead. Nobody is willing to stand up and admit weakness, and even less than nobody is willing to strap on their hard hat and battle the bureaucracy of weak council processes. It’s somewhat amusing to note that in this time of major consenting delay and uncertainty, the consenting top dog has found the time to take a months annual leave.

Thirdly, the new fire regulations that came into effect in April have really thrown a spanner into the works. The council was inundated with applications prior to the rule change so that they were processed within the previous, and much more relaxed, rules. Adding to that, the new rules generally require a new simulation process called VM2. It’s an incredibly uncertain, convoluted process which partly involves the simulation result being peer reviewed. Of course, the council with its shortage of cogs cannot find the time to do it, so one particular fire engineer spoken to recently is soon expecting the process to grind to an even more horrific halt.

Next decade, when I finally manage to get a council employee on the phone, I won’t be blaming him. He’s got a million jobs to do and he can only prioritise them by date. He’s got a cubicle and a set of responsibilities and he does them well. It’s his job to find that band aid in the top cupboard when things start bleeding. It’s not his job to prevent the bleeding in the first place. There’s another guy on a higher floor sitting on a larger chair and collecting a larger pay check who’s been tasked with that. But he’s probably not going to get around to it. He’s too busy deciding how much development contributions will go up.