Dialogue: In eco-city, send out the clowns...

By GARTH GEORGE

The people who run Waitakere City, which has promoted itself unashamedly in recent years as New Zealand's eco-city, seem to be doing their best to make themselves a laughing-stock.

At a time when its population is said to be growing faster than anywhere else in the country and, consequently, the need for services must be higher than ever, the council's $81.7 million draft budget for 2001-02 proposes cuts to services.

And the only reason for this, it appears, is that the councillors want a zero increase in rates. Well, they would, wouldn't they? After all, it is parish pump election year and all those with their hands on the pump handle are determined to keep them there.

They've whacked $1.1 million off capital expenditure on new roadworks, footpaths and sealing; and nearly $1 million from operating costs, including maintenance of parks and kerbsides, litter control and road resealing. Some 75ha of parkland will be allowed to revert to wilderness, another 48ha will be mowed only eight times a year instead of 12, and 96 street gardens will revert to lawns. Litter bins in streets and parks will be emptied less often.

By far the worst news is that a $250,000 allocation to libraries, including buying new books, has been scrapped. Arts and culture promotion gets $30,000 less.

So it seems that the clowns who ostensibly run this city, in which I have chosen to make my home, are prepared to let it degenerate into an overgrown, weed-infested, litter-strewn, potholed, illiterate, cultureless dump - all in the interests of getting re-elected in October.

I hasten, however, to exclude from that independent councillor Penny Hulse, who has publicly said that the "short-sighted budget" has been driven by some councillors' "desperate need to be re-elected" and that the shortfall will have to be made up by huge rate rises in the future.

That opinion is echoed by acting chief executive Harry O'Rourke, who says the cuts made in next year's spending will have to be compensated for in future budgets.

That might help to explain why the council will add some $38 million to its debt during the year, which will up its debt servicing costs to an annual $13 million.

So in local body politics we are being confronted with the same short-term, knee-jerk political attitudes that for years have afflicted our national politicians.

We have - in spite of a growing population and increased demand - had to put up with cuts in health, welfare, education and police services nationally, and now it looks as if were going to have to put up with cuts in local civic services, too.

I have always paid my rates and water charges promptly and gladly because when you consider what you get for them they're cheap at twice the price.

When I turn on the tap I get water; when the toilet flushes or the waste disposal kicks in the effluent disappears; I walk on adequate footpaths and drive on sealed, kerbed and channelled roads; I can walk, play or watch sport in any number of parks and other sporting facilities; I can read as many books as I like for nothing.

Well, that was true once, but nowadays it's not. I have read all I want to from the two libraries closest to home. So bereft are they of new material that I've given them up in favour of a couple of well-stocked local book exchanges. That the city councillors can cut money for already inadequate libraries says a lot about their intelligence - or, rather, lack of it.

But, once again, local body politics and national politics suffer the same problem: the people who really should be running our cities and districts and the country as a whole have more sense than to get into politics. It was ever thus.

Mind you, ratepayers as a breed have little going for them, either. Witness another bit of nonsense in Waitakere with the holding of a postal byelection this month to fill a vacancy left by a long-standing councillor who died.

It's less than seven months until the triennial local body elections, yet a gaggle of less than astute ratepayers petitioned the council for the byelection, which duly attracted 31 per cent of the number of people entitled to vote.

The encouraging thing about that is it shows that at least 69 per cent of electors had the good sense to do what I did and throw the voting papers in the wastepaper basket, thus saving the council the cost of return postage.

Last Friday, the new councillor, one Denise Yates, attended her first council meeting where she is reported to have been taken under the wing of chief clown Bob Harvey, who told the tyro that being a councillor will not be an easy job.

"It is somewhat bruising at times but a good life. I mean, I haven't had a job for nine years," said he.

Right on, Mayor Harvey.

* garth_george@nzherald.co.nz