Community councils should run Super City, MPs told

Sir Roger Douglas. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Auckland should be largely run by community councils with powers to set rates and compete for ratepayers and each others businesses, Act MP Sir Roger Douglas said today.

Sir Roger told a parliamentary select committee considering legislation setting up Auckland's new local government structure that the single unitary regional council should resemble a board of directors of a large company.

He suggested the single council board should be made up of a mayor and eight councillors elected at large and responsible for setting policy, and looking after region-wide issues such as roading and water.

The former Labour finance minister said under the single council there should be a flexible community council structure with ratepayers able to decide its size and even set up their own councils.

Groups of ratepayers who lived next to another community council should also be able to opt out and join another council.

"The capacity to change council will create competition for ratepayers, which is likely to see value for money being delivered by local government," Sir Roger said.

Rates demands should set out where the money was being spent and ratepayers should be able to decide whether they preferred to get services such as rubbish collection and recycling from the private sector.

"The golden rule is that decisions must be made by those closest to the action. Capability to make decisions also necessitates responsibility for revenue to pay it," Sir Roger said.

"Unless they are required to raise the revenue, community councils will join the queue of special interests which advocate increased spending."

Green MP Sue Kedgley also called for the role of community boards, as proposed in the bill, to be expanded to that of community councils with responsibility to deliver all local services within a fixed budget set by the wider single regional council.

Ms Kedgley said the bill as drafted gave too much power to the Auckland mayor and believed there needed to more councillors on the single council elected from wards

She was concerned that the single council could become a "bloated, inaccessible, remote monolith...there is a real risk, in other words, that it will end up a super tanker, rather than a super city council".

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