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Lack of accountability and transparency by Auckland City Council over cutbacks for a raft of projects in Tamaki is cause for greater say at the coal face, says the Tamaki Community Board.
More local powers and funding were needed under a two-tier Greater Auckland Council and community councils, board chairwoman Kate Sutton told the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Auckland Governance yesterday.
The Labour Party-controlled board supports the council's two-tier model, but is critical of how the council treats communities through the current community board structure.
Ms Sutton said the council had previously involved the community in $30 million of facilities to cope with the expected growth of 30,000 people in Tamaki. It then went and cut or deferred the work this year, with a lack of transparency and accountability.
Asked by commissioner David Shand if one of those projects, an upgrade of Glen Innes town centre, would be too big for a community board and too small for the Greater Auckland Council, she said the board was not for the current community board structure.
There needed to be greater decision-making and operations at the local level, she said.
"We say this from bitter experience as the powers devolved to community boards in Auckland City over successive terms since amalgamation [in 1989] have been systematically reduced," she said.
Landco Land Developments, which is building housing for 6000 people at Stonefields in the former Mt Wellington quarry in Tamaki, endorsed the two-tier model saying it would simplify rules and make it easier to invest in Auckland.
