Auckland mayor Wayne Brown vows to keep rates down and wants local boards to have more power

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown vows to keep rates down. Photo / Michael Craig

Auckland's new mayor is vowing to keep rates as low as possible as he warns residents that an economic and fiscal storm is on its way.

Wayne Brown also told an Auckland Council symposium today that he wanted more power for local boards and council committees.

"Aucklanders don't need council rates increases to add to the agony," he said.

"We must do whatever we can to avoid or at least minimise those rates increases, to reduce the pressure on young and lower-income home owners, who can least afford it."

Brown also said that he wants every council to have clear decision making powers as they and local boards are the closest to the communities that are affected by them.

He said decisions and recommendations should only be sent upwards through council if the law or exceptional circumstances demanded it.

"I do not want everyone just making recommendations upwards, downwards and sideways – generating thousands of pages of unread reports," he said.

"Be warned, of course, the committee members, including those from the Independent Māori Statutory Board, will then carry the associated political and legal accountability."

Brown acknowledged some progress had been made by the previous council to empower Local Boards but argued "we need to go further and faster".

He would like boards to be given clear capped budgets for their communities, have the sole power to decide how to spend it, and have the sole political and legal accountability over the funds and decisions.

For council-control organisations and other agencies, Brown said his Letters of Expectation, planned for December, "will be much more specific than has been the practice over the last six years".

He called for local board members to feed in their ideas so that the Letters of Expectation had real "grunt".

He also said CCOs "better include" real, meaningful outcomes in their draft Statements of Corporate Intent for the governing body to review, rather than platitudes.

"Aucklanders aren't interested [in] bland statements about improving the bus service," he said.

"They demand clear measurable targets about the minimum acceptable percentage of buses arriving on time, and the minimum acceptable average patronage. Let's work on that type of thing together."