Business View Oceania | December 2019

69 70 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA DECEMBER 2019 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA DECEMBER 2019 THE NAP I ER DI STR I CT MASONI C TRUST Taylor: “Yes, we have a waiting list in excess of 350 people. Recently we employed someone to update our database and they discovered applications dating back into the 1990s. So, we attempted to contact everyone on that list and we were able to reduce it down where people no longer required accommodation, or had passed away, or moved away, or found other options. But we still have around 350 live applications and that could be a single person or a couple. We are considerably cheaper than most of the publicly listed companies and so our units are, conservatively, maybe $100,000 cheaper than theirs. Therefore, people will obviously try to obtain a unit from the Trust. “You don’t have to have an association with Free Masonry to come into any of our villages. The service is available for anybody. There’s no preference given, it’s open to the public. We have applications from people outside of Napier who want to move back. A lot of people make an application quite some time before they’re ready to go into a retirement complex knowing that there is probably an eight to ten year waiting period. They may be in their mid-60s, expecting to go into a village in their mid-70s. People who forward plan are the ones who make hay. “As for staff, we have a very consistent group here in the administration section. My finance Manager came just after I did and she has been here just over 10 years. We first started off as a small team of three in the admin; that has now grown to six, partly because we purchased Elmwood and we needed more administrative support there and we needed a property manager to look after all the properties. Probably one of the biggest challenges is staffing the care facilities. In particular, registered nurses. What we’ve done as a Trust is to pay our registered nurses on exactly the same pay scale as they would receive at the District Health Board. So we’ve been able to hold our staff a lot better than some facilities. We currently have in total about 150 employees across the two facilities.”      Kensington Village Elbourne St. Village