The restructure was part of the continued amalgamation of former council-controlled organisation Infracore into the council\u2019s works department.<\/p>\n
Former InfraCore parks and open spaces staff members are being reorganised into five core teams covering asset maintenance, cleaning, gardening, arboriculture and sports and mowing.<\/p>\n
The council said the nursery closure will be \u201cstaged\u201d over the next few months \u2013 with no final public closure date given. <\/p>\n
Supplying outside buyers will stop after winter 2026. <\/p>\n
The statement said Rotorua\u2019s public gardens and parks would not be affected by the change. <\/p>\n
The council began consultation with impacted staff and respective unions in August before finalising the changes this month.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur staff are passionate about what they do and want to provide excellent services, and they have been very engaged in the change process, providing a lot of feedback for us to consider,\u201d said the councilgeneral manager of community experience, Alex Wilson.<\/p>\n
Rotorua Lakes Council community experience group manager Alex Wilson at a June 2025 meeting. Photo \/ Laura Smith<\/p>\n
Wilson thanked staff but said it had been decided the current operation was \u201cnot sustainable\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe decision to close the retail part of the nursery wasn\u2019t made lightly and is based on a review of its viability,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The council provided figures indicating the nursery had been losing an average of more than $70,000 a year, with $134,000 lost in the past financial year.<\/p>\n
Plant sales had also dropped by more than a third in four years.<\/p>\n
As for the remaining nursery assets, council chief executive Andrew Moraes said that would be a decision for the next council. <\/p>\n
Rotorua Lakes Council chief executive Andrew Moraes. Photo \/ Andrew Warner<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we know about the nursery is that significant capital investment of at least $2 million would be required to bring it up to a minimum operating standard,\u201d said Moraes. <\/p>\n
He said that would also then add to overall ongoing operational costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cRates fund renewals and upgrades \u2013 so we need to ensure that decisions about council assets are strategic and cater for current and future needs while also taking affordability into consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell told Local Democracy Reporting the decision was difficult but would \u201chelp to improve\u201d the council\u2019s financial position while still providing \u201cgreat gardens\u201d for the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile trying to create better services as well as find efficiencies and savings we\u2019ve unfortunately found that the nursery had been operating at a financial loss for sometime now,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that our public gardens are loved and enjoyed by many locals and visitors so are happy to confirm this wont change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amalgamated Workers Union New Zealand, which has members in the nursery workforce, previously urged the council to reconsider the closure and \u201cexplore genuine alternatives\u201d.<\/p>\n
At the time, the union called the decision \u201cdeeply disappointing\u201d and \u201cshort-sighted\u201d, and noted some affected staff had been with the council for \u201cdecades\u201d.<\/p>\n
Local Democracy Reporting approached the union for further comment for this story.<\/p>\n
Mathew Nash is a Local Democracy Reporting journalist based at the Rotorua Daily Post. He has previously written for SunLive, been a regular contributor to RNZ and was a football reporter in the UK for eight years.<\/p>\n
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The restructure was part of the continued amalgamation of former council-controlled organisation Infracore into the council\u2019s works department.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[19754,15153,34310,5205,232,111,43,139,5006,34311,69,644,1327,312,21324],"class_list":{"0":"post-37174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-19754","9":"tag-arm","10":"tag-axes","11":"tag-council","12":"tag-jobs","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-not","17":"tag-nursery","18":"tag-nz","19":"tag-retail","20":"tag-rotorua","21":"tag-says","22":"tag-sustainable"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}