Gwen Bull: Hard decisions needed to solve enduring woes

By birth I find myself in the wonderful position of living in a democracy. By choice I am in a position of leadership as an elected representative in that democracy.

On top of that, I was elected by my fellow councillors to chair the Auckland Regional Council.

The question I ask myself is: should I follow the long line of local government leaders in the Auckland region who have made decisions that seem to be based on their short-term election prospects?

Or is it time to make some of the hard decisions on behalf of the region for its long-term benefit?

There is only one possible answer. I must work with our council to adopt an annual plan that starts to provide the region and all its citizens with some of the solutions they have been asking for.

Local government politicians have been avoiding the hard questions for years. It has been standard practice to blame someone else for the state of the transport system.

Anyone who dared to take decisive action only lasted a short term in the elected positions they held. The Mayor of Auckland noted at the opening of the magnificent new Britomart Station that it had cost his two predecessors their mayoralties.

Today we are almost deafened by the noise of the media and some ratepayers who have received their bills from the regional council.

It seems some had not realised that they had been paying rates to us, and that this had previously been collected as part of their local city or district council rates account.

Nor were they aware of the many differing methods of collection used by the different councils across the region.

For those citizens, here are the reasons for the direct account. Last year legislative changes required all regional councils to apply their own rating policy to all ratepayers.

For collection we are required to use one rating policy for all properties in the region. We have a very limited set of "tools" as prescribed in law to carry this out.

We had the choice of capital value, land value or rental value as the main rating method. We could have a uniform charge up to 30 per cent of the total and we could apply differentials to increase the proportion certain groups would pay.

We were also able to target rates to properties with access to particular services. We chose capital value with targeted rates for passenger transport services and biosecurity, and with no differentials, because it is the most transparent and fair method available.

There was no way we could duplicate all the different methods previously used by the city and district councils, and there were going to be movements all around the region.

What if we had decided not to collect our rates this year?

We subsidise passenger transport by $196,000 a day. Almost all non-peak-hour bus, train and ferry services would stop. Congestion on the roads would increase overnight. How much more gridlock can we stand?

Auckland's new station would have only morning and afternoon trains and there would be no money for operations staff.

There would be no crosstown or middle-of-the-day bus services. Almost everyone would feel the impact in some way.

The ARC monitors pollution and enforces environmental standards. If we stopped this work, our waterways and the air could become polluted to the level of a Third World city.

We have mounted campaigns like 0800 Smokey and the Big Clean Up and have lobbied successfully for cleaner fuel. We provide an environmental education programme to 27,000 children. Without this range of work, our region would deteriorate rapidly.

The ARC manages the regional parks. Simply closing the gate to the regional botanical gardens, the Hunua Ranges, the Waitakere Ranges, Wenderholm, Tawharanui and the rest of the parks would be one option.

We co-ordinate the regional forums that plan for growth and transport requirements. That could be left to the 25 or so interested organisations, and we could have 25 different long-term plans.

Lack of co-ordinated planning is one of the factors that see the region where it is today.

Faced with these options, the council made a democratic decision to adopt our plan and the transparent rating model that goes with it.

We did our utmost to engage the community, and received almost 600 submissions to our draft plan.

From 450,000 ratepayers this is a low proportion, even by New Zealand standards. We made some changes to the plan and were prepared to make more if we received a clear message from the community.

I believe in the democratic process. Next year you will be able to mark this council's report card in the ballot box. My comment of caution: the transport woes of the region will not be solved without courage and conviction.

If you simply replace every council that is prepared to make hard decisions and collect the money required to implement them, you will get no hard decisions, no solutions, no improvement and, of course, no rate increases.

At the end of the day, the choice is yours.

* Gwen Bull is chairwoman of the Auckland Regional Council.