The Council publicly consulted on this in the last few months of Chadwick’s era – June / July 2022 .
I didn’t notice this at the time because Council was simultaneously trying to destroy democracy in Rotorua with the RDC (Representation Arrangements) Bill and dispose of 10 reserves.
Having reviewed the consultation, I think it was badly flawed. The public were offered 5 options:
(1) Business as usual
(2) Garden Organics (GO) collected weekly
(3) Food Organics (FO) collected weekly
(4) Food Organics (collected weekly) and Green Organics (collected fortnightly)
(5) Food Organics and Green Organics mixed collected weekly (FOGO)
The people who supported either Option 4 or 5 were asked if they were comfortable with a change of rubbish collection frequency from weekly to fortnightly. 71% of those people said yes. So nobody else has been asked if they are happy with this change.
On 10 May 2023 the newly elected Council (Infrastructure and Environment Committee) considered this and decided to proceed with option 5.
I was the only Councillor who voted against this. I argued that this was a new Council with 7 new Councillors out of 10 and times had changed (think COVID) since the consultation had taken place – therefore the consultation was ‘stale’.
I have taken every opportunity since to express my opposition to FOGO as I think it is a very bad idea. Surely the one thing we can all agree is core council business is rubbish collection, and this Council is even messing that up…
Implementation of FOGO was delayed by a year, which took us past the election period.
For more information here’s a link to the relevant Council agenda item: