Auckland super-Council
June 28th, 2007 at 8:32 am by David FarrarRodney Hide, Jordan Carter and I all agree that Auckland should have less Councils, even one Council.
This may cause a drop in the NZ dollar, as such agreement is rumoured to be the third sign of the Apocalypse.
Related posts:
- The Auckland Super City Plan
- NZ Herald on Auckland Super City
- Equal votes for the proposed Auckland Council?
- The Auckland Council Youth Panel
June 29th, 2007 at 11:38 am
If National committed to one Council for Greater Auckland they would be elected by a landslide.
I guess it’s just to hard for them to understand then, is it?
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
I can never understand why New Zealanders love the idea of large local authorities so much. If big is so much better why not abandon local governemnt and let central government rule everything.
Vote:The best council I ever had was Newmarket when Newmarket was a tiny borough. You could meet the mayor in the street, go inside to chat to the buiding inspector over coffee and get a building consent issued on the site.
There are economies of scale with provision of infrastucture but there are no economies of scale in democracy. The most efficient councils in NZ (in terms of rates per head) are about 20,000 to 70,000. Below that the costs per head are too high. Above that they dream of sister cities.
The French have a Mayor and council for every few hundred people but five massive companies run all their water and sewage – on competitive franchise system.
My own council, Kaipara, is too big in area. If I became a councillor I would spend half my life in a car driving to and from Dargaville.
The best governed districts in Auckland are the smallest ones.
We confuse the management of infrastructure such as roading with democracy. If Auckland becomes a super city it will the last in a string of super mistakes.
June 29th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Owen … good posting.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
IMHO we need small groups of elected people who are known and trusted by their constituents to make decisions. What we dont need and have now is an army of highly paid breaucrats writing reports designed to confuse the elected officals so the breaucrats can run the agenda (think Yes Minister etc)Most operations could and should be out sourced on a tender basis governed by best practice processes. It aint rocket science and it done need and army to do it.
But it wont happen because we too much inbuilt self interest at both elected and breaucrat levels to ever allow any changes that would improve the democratic process and increase cost efficency.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Owen is right , the best run councils before amalgamation were Mt Roskill and Mt Albert.
Vote:Waitakere has allways been amoungst the worst in NZ , (and is still that way) along with Far North.
Yet Papakura seems to hum along nicely , while Franklin is run by unqualified goons
June 29th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Auckland’s problem appears to be (I am in Wellington) conflict of interest related to an overlap of responsibilities. Thus deadlock.
An outsider might think one council would solve the problem – but would Wellington really amalgamate Porirua, Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt and Wellington into one council (how many outside Wellington City would want this).
A regional council is supposed to deal with the overlapping areas for the region and maybe some clear transfer of role and assets/funds to the regional council for this should occur.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
You mean _fewer_ councils. But good blog (from an ex-pat Kiwi’s perspective) and I promise to try and leave rather more purposeful comments in future.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Ya thats right Auckland should have only one council.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 12:29 am
Ya thats right Auckland should have only one council.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
There is no doubt that there are some TLA functions that work most efficiently at a regional level, such as water supply and waste treatment, roading, public transport, land management, parks, and environmental and biodiversity controls.
At the same time there are other issues that people prefer to entrust to smaller more accessible bodies, such as town planning and zoning, building controls and the like. These are the kind of issues that affect people personally and they want some sense of democratic influence over. Super large councils are very poor at providing this.
Personally I would like to see all the Regional Councils given a complete mandate to look after all infrastructure functions. Far too many smallish councils still run ineffective infrastructure organisations that are simply too small to ever reach a critical professional mass. This is particularly a problem in the water supply area and most noticeable in low population density rural districts like the Wairarapa or Rangitikei.
At present there is no clear delineation in function. In the Greater Wellington Regional Council area alone, there are no fewer than 14 different bodies dealing with water in one form or another. GWRC itself does bulk water supply for four councils, some just distribute water, some just treat waste, some do distribution and waste, and some try and do everything. There is considerable room for a substantial economy of scale gain across the whole region.
Clearly splitting off infrastruture functions to the Regional Councils would create two distinctly different classes of TLA; large infrastructure oriented bodies that operate at economies of scale, allowing the rest to reorganise as many smaller and more democratically oriented bodies that focus on issues of purely local import.
Vote: