KEY POINTS:
A $410,000 "corporate" model for a super city and lord mayor of Auckland will be balanced with more local democracy after a messy scrap on the Auckland City Council.
Howls of disbelief at a plan to axe community boards from a draft submission to the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Auckland Governance have forced the council to modify the "corporate" model championed by chief executive David Rankin.
The plan to replace community boards with one "neighbourhood" councillor for 60,000 people also carried the fingerprints of deputy mayor David Hay.
Mr Rankin's plan is the most radical prescription to come forward on the future of Auckland. Even right-wing groups like the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) and the One Auckland Trust have called for the retention of community boards.
Mr Rankin, who has not ruled out seeking the chief executive's job at the super city, wanted the power to dump 30 community boards across the region and concentrate local power in the hands of a small number of councillors and bureaucrats.
Bruce Kilmister, a spokesman for the 10 Auckland City community boards, told a meeting of the regional governance committee yesterday: "We have to give a voice and an avenue to local issues and local concerns. You remove the 'local' in local government by accepting the officers' model."
Mr Kilmister said the boards had come up with a plan to keep their entities. They supported a Greater Auckland Council but wanted an Auckland mayor and four deputy mayors.
Their plan would involve four area committees made up of a deputy mayor, regional councillors and community board chairs to oversee local issues.
However, the council is more likely to follow a model proposed by Citizens & Ratepayers councillor Aaron Bhatnagar for smaller, more tightly focused and properly resourced "neighbourhood committees" with three to four elected members.
Independent councillor Mark Donnelly said what the officers had come up with was a "corporate" model for reshaping Auckland, not a "community" model. He said there was a danger that Mr Rankin's draft plan would not persuade anybody and scare people into thinking Auckland City was going to take them over.
It needed more balance and not just concentrate on the flaws of the current system. It should highlight the many good things happening in Auckland local government.
The committee decided to spend up to $40,000 researching the issue of local democracy before finalising its submission on April 17. Mr Rankin has already spent up to $410,000 on consultants, including PricewaterhouseCoopers and a former council officer, John Williamson, for help with the officers' draft plan.
