Brian Rudman: Official nagger needed for CBD

Last month, Auckland City councillors restored $450,000 to the $9.2 million St Patrick's Square upgrade budget so that the planned spotlighting of the cathedral, which had been an integral part of the project, could go ahead. The lighting had been a victim of an earlier round of council cost-cutting.

The reallocation of funds means a delay in the planned Exchange Lane upgrade but arts and culture committee chairman Greg Moyle explained in a local paper it was far better to do one project completely and move on, rather than doing bits and pieces. It's hard to disagree with this sentiment. But I'd go a step further. I'd appoint an independent ombudsman, or official nagger, to monitor projects declared "completed", to ensure first that they are, and second, that once finished, they are maintained to a standard that matches the purple prose and huge costs that launched them into this world.

Take St Pat's Square, which had its grand opening on Saturday. From Swanson St, looking inland towards the cathedral, the view and the landscaping are impressive, but from busy Wyndham St, the vista between the shop fronts and the cathedral remains as pedestrian-unfriendly and uninviting as ever. The new paving is already liberally stained with greasy droppings, presumably from the adjacent eateries. The official nagger could get on to this and not give up. While at it, he could embarrass the adjacent businesses into appreciating the benefit the input of all this public money is having on their trade, and shame them into slapping a coat of paint onto their tired and tatty facades.

My nagger would also be down in Queen St, getting to the bottom of the nikau palms health scare. Unsurprisingly, city officials have been quick to hose down the alarms raised by prominent native plantsman Graeme Platt in today's Herald. But you only have to wander past the sad kauri prison at the bottom of Queen St to know that what the city considers "healthy" is not necessarily the same as the rest of us.

If the Britomart Square kauri were cows, the SPCA would be dragging the city through the courts on charges of malnutrition and cruel and unnatural imprisonment. Has no one at the council noticed that the trees closest to the sea breezes are either dead, or giving a very good impression of it.

As for the nikau, I recall that at the time they went in two winters ago, some experts worried about the wisdom of transplanting mature specimens from the bush into this alien urban environment. One told me they were "notoriously hard to shift" and in his experience, "98 per cent of shifted nikau die".

Once the palms started going in though, looking so grand and different, I preferred to believe the optimists who predicted a promising future for them.

A year on, in August last year, I got all lyrical about their first blossoming in foreign parts - though I did hedge my bets as is my wont. I noted, "It is said that trees under terminal stress attempt to flower in a desperate attempt to pass on their genes. But I prefer to think the bursts of flower buds, high up their trunks, are the recent down-country migrants' celebration of their new environment."

This year, the same spring reawakening has been much more subdued. Walking down Queen St on Friday, the flowering seems more sparse, and the new frond growth less luxuriant. Two outside specialists point to the thinning of the trunk where it meets the bulb of the palms from which the fronds emerge as a bad sign of stress. They also says bugs and disease are attacking the fronds.

In response, city officials say they have a plan. It would be nice to think they had some plant food and insecticide as well and had already begun feeding the ailing plants. After all, the infestation is so widespread, and the malnourishment so obvious to the experts, that this deterioration hasn't happened overnight.

An official nagger could have had the health of the nikau on his list of post-Queen St upgrade things to do. He or she might have also jumped up and down until something is done about the ongoing leaky veranda scandal that blights the so-called Golden Mile every time it rains.

Like the property owners facing St Patrick's Square, he could target the shop-keepers of Queen St who are too mean and penny-pinching to bring their little stretch of veranda up to a standard that matches the $43.5 million, ratepayer-funded pavement that passes outside.