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THE nationwide CAMPAIGN TO reform the council rating system
Media release 13 April 2009

Statement from David Thornton

The antics of Auckland’s mayors and councils should be ignored as irrelevancies.

Details of new Auckland very much a ‘work in progress’.

The crocodile tears flowing from mayors and city councillors, and the screaming about the end of local democracy, are bit rich when it was the city councils of the Auckland region which has been raising rates unreasonably and refusing to empower the existing community boards.

The Government’s plan for Auckland is a great opportunity for local communities to put their stakes in the ground and work together to agree the sort of delegated power they need to have in order to better serve their local communities.

The Auckland region’s mayors and councillors have shown scant regard for the communities wishes in the past, and the unseemly battles between the mayors councils has been a major factor in convincing citizens that there was need for change in Auckland.

We have been given a Super City council and up to 30 Local Councils – a framework which now needs the details to be added.

That detail is very much a ‘work in progress’.

With such an opportunity, the antics of the current mayors and councils should be ignored as irrelevancies –which is what they have become.

While the government has said this reform is not about rates, the funding of the new Auckland Council, including funding for theLocal Boards, will become a matter for much discussion during the process of change to the new governance arrangements.

There will be oppoprtunites for savings in some areas –but the main aim must be to stabilises rates and continue to seek in earnest for alternative funding methods.

The existing Community Boards are in an excellent position to engage with their communites and pass on their preferences for the new Local Boards to the Governmment – thus ensuring community input into the shaping of the final detailed new structure.

ENDS

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