Editorial: Let citizens have say on Super City

Opinion

A great deal of work remains to be done on the Auckland Super City scheme and, this time, it must be done in collaboration with citizens. The mayors who met Local Government Minister Rodney Hide late last week seemed reconciled to their own demise. They would have preferred the Government to have followed the royal commission's recommendation to turn existing councils into subsidiaries of a single Auckland Council but they have to accept the Government's preference to replace them with 20 or 30 community boards.

The next step is to define the respective powers and roles of the Auckland Council and the community boards. Mr Hide has given the mayors to believe they will be able to work with Government officials on the city's new structure and transitional arrangements. All but one are rightly concerned that the boards will be toothless under the Government's plan.

Without their own rating power or staff, the boards will have to plead or agitate for any local aspiration that differs from the city's programme. There is no need to impose this sort of uniformity on Auckland. If there is to be one rate collected by the supreme council a set proportion of it should be returned to each community board, for both their statutory responsibilities, yet to be decided, and discretionary use.

The statutory responsibilities should include local planning and resource consents, and they should have maximum discretion to develop and maintain parks, libraries, swimming pools, community centres or sports facilities with funds they can call their own.

First, of course, their number has to be decided. There is quite a difference between 20 and 30. With 20 community boards, each would combine several of Auckland's identifiable communities. There would be perhaps four or five on North Shore, for example, and a fiercely distinct community such as Devonport would not have the independence it desires.

But 20 would accord with the number of seats on the proposed Auckland Council, and indeed the number of parliamentary electorates in the region, neatly aligning representation at all levels if the Government would permit it. Unfortunately, it seems to see contiguous city and national electorates as a problem, perhaps more for MPs than anyone else.

Representation issues are not among the items for discussion by the working party agreed between the mayors and the minister. The mayors, John Banks excepted, believe all 20 council seats should be elected from wards, while the Government wants eight elected city-wide. Mr Hide has refused further discussion on this question before legislation is introduced to Parliament. He says the mayors can take their concerns to a select committee once the legislation is in train.

Opposition to city-wide seats seems to be building in Auckland, on grounds that the cost of contesting them will be too much for all but business-sponsored or party candidates. Reserving eight such seats would require 12 wards to be drawn for the rest, meaning the city would be possibly divided three different ways for parliamentary, city and community elections. It would be needlessly untidy.

The best feature of the single city proposal is the directly elected mayor, which seems to have been accepted by its critics. The mayor would have powers unprecedented in New Zealand local government. The office would initiate programmes and budgets, have a staff of its own, and decide the council members appointed to chair committees.

Essentially, the mayoralty is all that remains of the royal commission's carefully considered scheme. The Government took two weeks to rewrite the rest. It needs to tread more carefully from here on. More Aucklanders need to be given a hearing.