KEY POINTS:
Waitakere wants to take over a chunk of its neighbours Auckland and Rodney if a proposed shake-up of local government goes ahead.
Mayor Bob Harvey and councillors made the case for expanding their city to the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Auckland Governance yesterday.
Mr Harvey, Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse and councillors told a public hearing at the Trusts Stadium in Henderson that their model would feature a strengthened regional council and four cities based on Waitakere, Auckland City, North Shore and Manukau.
Waitakere would include the western ward of Rodney District Council around Kumeu, Huapai and Helensville, plus the existing Avondale ward of Auckland City that had been considered to go into Waitakere at the last local government shake-up in 1989.
Mr Harvey said the "Waitakere way" was admired locally, nationally and globally, and should continue.
"It is a model for how cities can be shaped with vision and smart thinking." The council is strongly opposed to the two-tier model of a strengthened regional body, supported by beefed-up community boards.
Penny Hulse said emasculated community boards doing street signs and pot holes would not deliver a world-class region. Councillor Janet Clews, a former mayor of Glen Eden, said it would be a "back to the future move".
This was a reference to the situation before 1989 when the region was overseen by the Auckland Regional Authority and 29 local councils.
The commission has taken a strong interest at a series of public hearings on the appropriate powers and size of community boards.
Commission chairman Peter Salmon, QC, a former High Court judge, yesterday said there was a strong view that local government was best presented in bodies of 60,000 to 100,000 people, and beyond that you risked losing connection with people and built big bureaucracies.
"Why is Waitakere better off as a single city than, say, two entities?" asked Mr Salmon.
Penny Hulse said the constipation that came with change and amalgamation had taken nearly 20 years and now Waitakere, population 186,000, had the gravitas and economic base to focus on going forward.
She said community boards were a critical interface between the council and community, but she did not believe they should have the power to develop policies or set rates.
Under the Waitakere proposal, the regional body would have eight councillors elected at large and the four councils would make two appointments each from among their elected representatives. The leader of the regional body would be elected by his or her peers, not by voters at large.
Penny Hulse said appointments from the councils would bring local knowledge and strengthen the accountability of the authority.
The regional authority would develop "one plan" for Auckland that would be binding on local councils and central government.
But the idea of four big councils sticking to "one plan" drew Mr Salmon to remark: "This has been Auckland's problem for many years. I don't think relying on goodwill is going to solve it."
Another commissioner, retired public servant Dame Margaret Bazley, said maintaining collective responsibility for decisions "would represent a huge change in culture and I wonder if that is achievable". The commission also heard from the four community boards in Waitakere, who supported the council's model of change but noted their delegated powers had been reduced and the marriage with the council was "not working well".
