Back in February Raglan 23 reported on a decision by Waikato District Council, at a secret meeting, to stop accepting cash at all of its libraries and offices including Raglan. In November 2016, as an experiment WDC downgraded services at Huntly Library and stopped accepting cash to pay $1.50 book reservation fees and other council charges.
- All we know about the decision is the vote:
Cr AD Bech – in Favour
Cr JA Church – Against
Cr DW Fulton – in Favour
Cr JM Gibb – in Favour
Cr SL Henderson – Against
Cr SD Lynch – Against
Cr RC McGuire – Against
Cr FM McInally – Against
Cr BL Main – in Favour
Cr EM Patterson – in Favour
Cr NMD Smith – in Favour
Cr LR Thomson – in Favour
His Worship the Mayor – in Favour
So 5 councillors voted against the motion while 6 councillors and the Mayor voted in favour of the proposal. Our Raglan councillor Lisa Thomson voted for the motion.
I contacted WDC asking for some information so people could understand the reason for the decision. They said it was a matter of staff safety about the amount of cash handled and they couldn’t release it. I pointed out that all businesses in Tuakau, Huntly, Ngaruawahia and Raglan handle cash.
To make it easy for WDC I made this request under the Official Information Act:
The information I need is for any 12 month period is :
Dollar value of all library only payments taken at all Waikato District Libraries.
- Number of all library only payments made at all Waikato District Libraries.
- Dollar value of all library only payments taken in cash at all Waikato District Libraries.
- Number of all library only payments made in cash at all Waikato District Libraries.
- If this information is not available, then
- Dollar value of all payments under $50 taken at all Waikato District offices or libraries.
- Number of all payments under $50 made at all Waikato District offices or libraries.
- Dollar value of all payments under $50 taken in cash at all Waikato District offices or libraries.
- Number of all payments under $50 taken in cash at all Waikato District offices or libraries.
After escalating the enquiry to the CEO their comms manager emailed saying:
“Firstly, I’d like to apologise for not getting back to you in writing in relation to your LGOIMA request below. That was an oversite (sic) and that shouldn’t have happened.
As we discussed when we spoke on the phone on 22 February 2017, Waikato District Council made the decision to withhold certain information from the public about the specifics of our cash collection at Council premises on public safety grounds. We believe that good reasons to withhold information exists under LGOIMA 1987 section 7(2): (d) avoid prejudice to measures protecting the health or safety of members of the public. We maintain this position in respect of your below request.
However, please find below some more general information that may be helpful for your coverage of this issue:
Data collected on over-the-counter transactions across all sites, shows that over the past three financial years an average of 14% of total customer payments (in dollar terms) were made in person at council sites, and only 1% of total customer payments were paid in cash.The majority of customer payments are received electronically via online credit card payments, direct debits, and automatic payments.
On a site-by-site basis the mix of cash as a proportion of the individual site takings in the last three years averages between 5% at Raglan to 15% at Huntly.
Please do feel free to call Angela Parquist (Customer Delivery Manager) on 021 334833 who would be happy to discuss this matter with you further. “
So 1% of payments are in cash. The WDC annual report shows an annual revenue of $141,057,000. So doing the maths, this means that approximately 1.4 million dollars is received in cash at council offices. I’m more interested in the ratepayers and library users that this value represents.
As I do not believe there are any staff safety issues about how much petty cash the library receives given the small value of these transactions, so I have asked the Ombudsman to investigate.
Have your say on what type of payments the Waikato District Council should accept with our poll: