Roasting for ARC chair outrates TV

By BERNARD ORSMAN

A small crowd of Northcote residents tore themselves away from last night's gripping episode of Coronation St to tear into Auckland Regional Council chairwoman Gwen Bull.

Mrs Bull's presentation to 30 people at the Northcote Residents Association got a polite hearing, but the tone turned feral when the meeting was opened to questions.

At one stage, Mrs Bull was accused of being arrogant and condescending, to which she snapped back: "Please do not tell me I condescend to do anything."

She went on to tell people that if they did not want to pay their ARC rates that was "fine" but there would no more buses, trains or ferries.

Regional ratepayers rebellion spokesman David Thornton, who also addressed the meeting, said it was still not too late for the ARC to reset rates. If not, the council should resign.

One woman told Mrs Bull that the ARC had a lot of fences to mend and the only way to do so was by listening to people, dropping the penalties and allowing people to pay by instalments instead of in one lump sum or direct debit.

When Mrs Bull said that was something the council would look at next year, the hall erupted into calls of "This year, this year".

One superannuitant, Mrs Helen Taylor, asked Mrs Bull how she got a salary increase of $25,000.

"I had absolutely no say over my salary this year. It was set by the Higher Salaries Commission," Mrs Bull said.

What she did not tell the meeting was that she accepted the pay rise, taking her salary to $125,377 plus a car, and could have turned it down, which is what North Shore Mayor George Woods did.

Mrs Taylor later said her ARC rates had risen from $100 to $306, which she and her husband had to find from their combined pension of $19,604.

Lee Enfield said most people had to do with pay rises of 2 per cent to 3 per cent and wanted to know where the money was supposed to come from to pay for higher ARC rates.

"Can't you see it's quite simple," one woman said.

"We are not getting services. We are not getting anything [from the ARC] we can see. You guys go down to central Government and tell them it is not fair," the woman said.

After the verbal battering, Mrs Bull was visibly relieved to be in agreement. She had earlier blamed the Government for the ARC's woes and said it was time for central Government to find ways other than property taxes to fix 50 years of under-investment in Auckland's infrastructure.