Auckland Local Government: How Many Wards? How Many Community Councils?

So we're all into making submissions to the Select Committee about these changes.
As you may know, I'm not happy about destroying so much institutional knowledge and capacity, in order to achieve the agreed goal of strengthened regional governance.
But, if that is where the Government is determined to take things, then it is necessary to get the best outcome for Auckland....

It's called swallowing rats....

Wards: Present thinking is that there will be 20 Auckland City Councillors (Govt proposals = 12 ward members, and 8 elected at large), a Mayor elected at large, and Maori seats (though Government at present don't want any of these).

I support 2 or 3 Maori seats. I also support a Mayor elected at large (though I think the powers proposed for the Mayor - especially ability to appoint Committee Chairs - is not a good recipe for a coherent, collegial and consensus thinking Auckland).

I oppose Auckland Councillors being elected at large for a host of reasons: campaigns would be prohibitively expensive, representation would be poor, accountability would be worse. Most opponents are calling for a "1 member 1 ward" system. This would mean dividing Auckland into 20 wards, and having first-past-the-post elections in each of those wards.

While this has the appearnce of being more democratic, you have to also consider how effective it would be. The risk of a single member for each ward, is that patch protection and parochialism would tend to drive their decisions at Council. Also, first-past-the-post elections create that old style sort of governance which NZ moved away from when it went to MMP.

North Shore City Council is presently formed of 15 councillors, and they are elected from 3 wards. These are multi-member wards. 5 members/ward. I understand - from being a North Shore Councillor in the past - and from talking to councillors from previous regimes - that this system tends to encourage councillors to think city-wide - rather than just their own electoral backyard. The North Shore ward system was brought in in 1998.

Auckland Regional Council has a healthy Council, with good regional decision-making for the most part. That's been my experience. It has 13 members. It does not have 13 wards though. In fact it has two single member wards (Rodney and Franklin/Papakura), two 2-member wards (North Shore and Waitakere), one 3-member ward (Mamukau), and one 4-member ward (Auckland). What this means for the multi-member wards, is that ratepayers have a choice of several when they vote, and they also have a choice of whom to deal with when they have an issue. It also means that elected members in a multi-member ward, can seek support from fellow members when there is a local issue. It also means they canallocate meetings between themselves. And other benefits.

It has also meant - in my experience - that members from multi-member wards do take a regional perspective.

So. I think this structure has merit for the Auckland Council. We could have - say - 9 wards. One each for Rodney, Papakura, Franklin (single-member wards). 1 each for Auckland and Manukau (ie two, 4 - 6 member wards). 1 each for North Shore and Waitakere (ie two 3-member wards). Ward sizes would be about 60,000/member - so a 3 member ward would be for a voting population of about 180,000.

Community Councils. At present there are 30 community Boards in Auckland Region. But Papakura and Rodney Districts have none. Government has indicated it wants 20-30 Community Boards in total. I suggest that Auckland Council Ward areas, should be contiguous with a set of Community Boards (or Community Councils - a better name for these new entities would be "Community Councils"). This would mean it was clear to all, which Auckland Council members were related to which Community Councils.

There is some logic to deciding that existing Community Board (Council) boundaries (broadly) are retained. And then - say - 3 new ones established inPapakura, and 4 new ones established in Rodney. That would make 37. The benefit of this would be to reduce some of the re-organisation chaos that is already inevitable.