Faye White: Do we want to follow Auckland?

Faye White

When Barbara Arnott was mayor she had a philosophy which I admired and that was to back up your statements with facts in order to support the case or argument you were putting forward.

It often made you think about your actions before you took a blind leap of faith into unknown territory.

Therefore one must ask where are the facts that undisputedly back up the Local Government Commission's revised amalgamation proposal for Hawke's Bay.

I seriously question the integrity of the proposal especially based on the facts coming out of Auckland.

In the revised amalgamation proposal five local boards are suggested with the same boundaries as the current council wards. This means for CHB and Wairoa there will be six local board representatives, Napier and Hastings nine and Ngaruroro seven.

These local boards are to be responsible for decisions affecting local communities. One mayor and18 councillors would make up the Hawke's Bay Council and they would be responsible for high-level matters affecting the whole region. In theory, it might sound good, but facts are what people should make a decision on.

Fact 1: Local boards are not working in Auckland and they are now protesting at their powerlessness. There is talk of pushing for de-amalgamating of the Auckland super-city which has been sparked by local board members who feel tired of feeling "impotent".

Fact 2: Last month all of Auckland's 21 local boards signed a stinging letter rebuking Len Brown over his leadership.

Matters had come to a head for local boards who felt "stifled" and "ignored" by Auckland Council, the letter said.

Auckland Upper Harbour Local Board member, Christine Rankin told a local paper of their frustrations with the new system. She said the new amalgamated council was out of step with what the community wanted and that its tireless procedures got in the way of progress.

"The bureaucracy is killing us ... I'm sick of sitting here and being impotent to our community's real needs when all people want is a footpath. Real people come in with real issues and we are powerless," she said. "We have to stand up and say we are not happy. It's a creation that should have worked but it's not."

"Ratepayers are paying for things that central government should be paying for and they keep putting our rates up and lowering our services."

Under the mayor's proposed long-term plan, boards had been expected to significantly cut operating budgets while community projects went on hold, she said.

Fact 3: Rate increases for Auckland from July 1, 2015. While the average household increase for Auckland is 5.6 per cent (Napier's increase this year was 1.9 per cent), some households face massive household rate increases of 40 per cent or more next year (3738), 25,000 (20 per cent) and 126,000 (10 per cent).

Fact 4: This week we have been told of Auckland Council's big IT $100 million blow-out. "New Core" is an IT programme designed to merge the outdated systems of the eight local bodies that were amalgamated into the Super City in 2010. New details released show the approved budget of $71 million has moved out to a total cost of $171 million with a 12-month delay.

So, the facts I have presented from our Auckland "amalgamated" super city are: local boards are feeling "impotent", rates are increasing, in some cases up to 40 per cent, and budgets are being blown out, the IT programme, for example, by $100 million. Do we want to follow down this path for Hawke's Bay? I certainly don't.

-Faye White is Deputy Mayor of Napier

-Business and civic leaders, organisers, experts in their field and interest groups can contribute opinions. The views expressed here are the writer's personal opinion and not the newspaper's.

Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz.