On the Crux podcast this week Cromwell resident James Dicey gets stuck into the Central Otago District Council over what he sees as the Alexandra-based council being "the tail wagging the dog", where "technocrats and bureaucrats" are driving a process that ignores the wishes of Cromwell residents.
Mr Dicey, now an influential winemaker but also a qualified lawyer and accountant, tells Crux that he believes the value of Cromwell land being taken from local community board control by the CODC (the so-called 'districtisation') could well be worth up to half a billion dollars when developed.
He describes the history of tensions between Cromwell and Alexandra being the result of a forced marriage when local government reforms were put in place many years ago.
It's a fascinating history of two towns on divergent paths and Mr Dicey worries that it will be hard to use local elections to produce any real change in what he sees as a CODC agenda to take money and control away from the people of Cromwell.
"It's a gross misrepresentation. It's been blurred. It's been muddied. No one actually really quite knows or understand exactly what the implications are. They don't really understand what the potential risks are because it's been fudged all the way through - intentionally, in my view, to make it very difficult for people to understand exactly what they've given up or what the council has taken back from the community.
"We don't really actually know how it's going to be used and abused."
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