$250,000 QLDC Wānaka airport survey produces six email responses

Analysis.

The first report from a group of French consultants hired by QLDC for $250,000 to assist with planning the future of Wānaka airport has produced dramatically underwhelming results measured by both quantity and quality.

In a first draft report that will be presented to the Queenstown Lakes District Council next Tuesday (August 19) from the consultants (Egis - employing 20,500 people across 100 countries) tells the council what everybody already knew via a tiny sample of feedback relative to the very large consultants fee being funded by ratepayers.

To put these numbers into perspective 2,230 page views is what Crux would see for a small to medium daily news story over a 24 - 48 hour time period - whereas the French consultants numbers are over an entire month.

261 online Wānaka airport survey responses over the same month compares with what Crux would see from an average Survey Monkey post (at a cost of less than $500 per year) of between 500 and 1700 responses with around 400 detailed comments over 5 - 7 days.

The same consultants have discovered what any QLDC staff member or Wānaka resident would already know.

Wānaka residents like the airport as it is and want it to be a domestic airport, not an international airport.

The French consultants also asked the people who work at the airport what they think. The result - everybody is pretty happy with the way things are and they are against significant change. Especially the team who run the successful Warbirds Over Wanaka airshow.

So - what’s next? Well the consultants plan to do it all again throughout August and September.

They intend to “playback the mutually exclusive scenarios to the community in the second round of engagement and vote.”

It’s not clear exactly what the mutually exclusive positions are. Wānaka residents and airport users don’t want any big change - we knew that already. So that just leaves QLDC presumably wanting some type of significant change - producing an outcome involving “mutually exclusive” points of view.

QLDC is spending ratepayers money - $250,000 - on the survey so it will be interesting to see how the consultants finish their work. Keep the client (QLDC) happy - or reflect the actual views of the people being surveyed?

Being an election year we would not be surprised to see Wānaka candidates who see this survey as a total waste of money gaining quite a lot of success with the people that vote.