Editorial: Good idea to apologise first, then start failing

Doug McKay expects the Super City's first week to be nerve-racking. Photo / Dean Purcell

Full marks for honesty to the new chief executive of the Auckland Council, Doug McKay, who has warned ratepayers to expect "screw-ups" when the new organisation is formed.

It hardly inspires confidence but it is better that the risks of merging eight organisations simultaneously are known now than once problems occur.

Every three years citizens get to vote for their mayors and councillors but interaction with local councils is a constant part of city life.

Their services and communications are vital to most people's homes and businesses and they take in considerable sums each week from ratepayers to fund their operations.

The Auckland Council will bring together every computer system, rates bill, dog registration, building permit and planning process, sports field and parking policy from the seven local councils and the Auckland Regional Council.

Many hundreds of people will be new to their specific jobs when it opens for business. The merger has been hurried by the need for a Super City by this local body election.

So it is ripe for dysfunction, or, as Mr McKay would have it, "screw-ups". He asks Aucklanders to forgive any such failings in the first days of the new council.

He is getting his excuses, his apologies, in first. In the United States it is called "prebuttal". It might work, if communications to the public are good enough and the council's commitment to putting things right, quickly, is obvious to ratepayers.

The alternative is a first, lasting impression of incompetence; hardly the super start anyone would have anticipated.