Local Government Commission Recommendations for SuperCity

I went along to the Hyatt Auckland on Friday - with keen interest - to hear the Local Government Commission (LGC) announce its recommendations for SuperCity Ward and Local Board structure plus boundaries. About a hundred of us gathered in the darkened room, which probably had room for a hundred more at the while cloth covered tables that awaited us. One table at the back groaned under the weight of copies of map books and reports that contained the LGC recommendations (these were handed out after the Commissioners presented their power point summary.)

Sue Piper, Chair of the LGC, emphasised at the beginning that Auckland Council, plus the Local Boards, would be involved in: "shared decision-making". And that set the scene. We also heard from Grant Kirby and Gwen Bull - the other two commissioners.

I won't summarise the recommendations here, because these are reasonably public, but you can get the report (a good read), and the maps, at this link:
http://www.lgc.govt.nz/lgcwebsite.nsf/wpg_URL/Auckland-Governance-Proposals-for-Wards-Local-Boards-and-Boundaries-for-Auckland!OpenDocument

The very broad numbers in the recommendations are these:

- there will be eight 2-member wards
- there will be four single-member wards (Rodney, Franklin, Maungawhau - Auckland CBD and environs plus Hauraki Gulf Islands, New Lynn)
- there are 19 Local Boards, of these 13 will have Subdivisions (with specific numbers of Board Members elected from each Subdivision)
- the Local Boards vary considerably in size, with from 5 to 9 members

I published my view about what was needed from the LGC, in September, at:
http://joelcayford.blogspot.com/2009/09/supercity-boundaries-and-local.html

I argued there in support of Multi-Member Wards for Auckland City (ie not single member wards), and also in support of fewer and larger Local Boards - with no more than 3 for the present area of North Shore City.

The LGC recommendations are along these lines, and so I am relieved. I know that not everybody agrees with this approach, but in my view, provided Local Boards are delegated significant local responsibilities, duties, roles, powers, and commensurate funding tools - then the shared decision-making structure recommended by the LGC will make the best of the severe re-structuring of Auckland local government.

To conclude I quote a couple of chunks from the LGC report:

Re Multi-Member Wards:

...."Apart from the arrangements for the two single-member wards for rural
Rodney and Franklin, we have proposed two-member wards in most cases.
We have found that in Auckland, two-member wards provide greater
opportunities than single-member wards to combine like communities of
interest and in other cases to avoid splitting communities of interest. Two member
wards also provide potential for more diverse representation of
communities at the council table and will provide a choice for residents on
who to approach with local concerns following the election.

We also note that larger ward areas would not require the degree of boundary
changes over time, as smaller wards would, in order to comply with the ‘+/-
10% fair representation rule’. We see this as an important consideration in
our objective to establish an enduring representation structure.
On the other hand, wards larger than two members would mean that
councillors could be seen as that much more remote from local communities.

Large wards are also seen by many as likely to discourage independent
candidates from standing at elections given the resources required to
campaign in such wards. On balance we believe two-member wards are
generally an appropriate size for wards. We also noted a level of support for
two-member wards in the initial views we received....

On Local Boards:

...."we noted a number of other provisions in the
Local Government (Auckland Council) Act relevant to the establishment of
local boards. These provisions include the decision-making responsibilities of
the Auckland Council which are to be shared between the Council itself and
the local boards. Principles for the allocation of decision-making
responsibilities under the Act include that decision-making for non-regulatory
activities should be exercised by local boards unless, for particular prescribed
reasons, decisions should be made by the Auckland Council.

To us, this suggests that boards will need to be of a sufficient size to ensure
they can attract capable people to stand for the board and they have the
ability to generate sufficient resources to undertake effective local-decisionmaking.
For example, a local board may wish to request the Auckland
Council to levy a targeted rate in its area to fund a particular local service or
amenity. To ensure this is effective, the local board area will need to be an
appropriate size, have boundaries that relate to local service delivery, and
contain sufficient capacity to support decision-making on such local services.

We also noted other provisions in the Act which we believe should be taken
into account when establishing local boards. In particular, will the total
number of boards impact on the ability of the Auckland Council to meet its
responsibilities? These provisions include the powers of the mayor, which
include establishing processes and mechanisms for community engagement.

There is also a requirement for the Auckland Council to have an agreement
between it and each of the local boards and for these agreements to be
included in the Council’s long-term council community plan. Clearly a
particularly large number of boards will affect the Council’s ability to carry out
these tasks efficiently and effectively....

You can see more in the very readable LGC report, accessible at the link above. Submissions are due by 11th December. These will be considered by the LGC, and their final determination must be completed by 1st March 2010.

Three Waters Governance under Auckland Reorganisation

The Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill 2009, for which submissions to Select Ctte close 26th of June, provides for Watercare Services to "plan and manage integration of water supply and wastewater services" in s.24. (It does this by amending the Local Government (Tamaki Makaurau Reorganisation) Act 2009, as it happens.)

It is essential there are strong submissions on this provision.

It is essential that - if there is to be vertically integrated management of Auckland's water economy - then this must also include stormwater. It must be the 3 waters.

Some argue that, because stormwater is essentially local, it falls locally, then its management should sit with land use planning, transport programmes (gutters are used to carry stormwater flows), and other community programmes (rain is nice and fuzzy and good for environmental education and drains and what happens when it all gets to the sea - sort of stuff).

I completely disagree with this approach. In my time (6 years) on North Shore City Council, which does have vertically integrated wastewater - it managed local sewer network and Rosedale wastewater treatment plant - the benefits of 3 water management were recognised by senior staff, councillors and public alike.

We have a tui feeder in our garden. I put sugar water in it every morning - I forget the odd day. They come along and preen and perform. And they sing...

You cannot separate stormwater from water supply and wastewater. Stormwater infiltration is the single biggest challenge to wastewater reticulation and treatment - they become intwined in the pipe network. Their integrated management is essential.

Rainwater is a component of water supply - for non-potable uses (washing machines and toilet flushing). Many homes in the region rely soley on rainwater for their supply of all water.

Wastewater across the region is NOT all reticulated. Many homes have onsite systems. Many of these are very modern and competently engineered.

It is simply not good enough to charge Watercare with managing the "easy" bit, the piped bit, the metered and attractive to privatise bit - when there is so much more to water, wastewater and stormwater.

Watercare has had a poor record in my view across the region, because it has been so focussed on end-of-pipe solutions. This stance is why Auckland has seen Eco-water at Waitakere, Manukau Water at Manukau, North Shore's 3 water division - all active in managing 3 waters together, across their territorial areas - not just end of pipe. If this vertical integration is to proceed, then that expertise must then be retained in Watercare, and its role and responsibility must move to include also: on-site wastewater systems; the new stormwater systems that have evolved across North Shore, Waitakere, Manukau which are based on streams, ponds, detention and riparian planting - rather than pipes and concrete outfalls; and rainwater collection systems.

Rogernomes make their grab for Auckland’s planning tiller…

I don’t say this lightly, and I don’t have concrete evidence, but you have to admire the clinical purity of the Government’s deconstruction of Auckland planning institutions. First there was RMA stream-lining, now it’s Local Government stream-lining, state imposed infrastructure (SH20 at Waterview), and who knows what’s next….

The context couldn’t be more perfect, just as it couldn’t have been more perfect in the 1980’s where New Zealand’s financial crisis helped push aside opposition to a draconian cluster of reforms.

The context today includes: General Election, Royal Commission, Global Recession. That’s quite a triumvirate. Hard enough for Aucklanders to deal with one at a time, let alone all together. The uncertainty caused by these factors creates the perfect climate for an organised Government to make transforming changes.

And Auckland is like a possum in the headlights. Most Aucklanders get on with their business and lives vaguely disquieted or excited by talk of a super-city. Be great to live in a Super City – but what is it – really? Many citizens are sharply aware of what’s coming to them, what’s going to be changed or abolished, and are revolting in their own individual ways. Meanwhile Auckland’s Councillors sit at their meetings across Auckland trying to get on with their busy agendas, but there’s an enormous distraction, an enormous elephant in the room.

Some rather like it, and are cuddling up to it, hoping perhaps to influence its manners, tendencies and toilet habits. They don’t want to be shat on from a great height. Others are highly sceptical and worried, and would like to kick it out, but haven’t the collective strength and are not sure which end has the tusks. These councillors and mayors are easily criticised of course: “just protecting their jobs, out for themselves, don’t trust what they say…”

And then there’s the by-election. Top list MPs fight it out at Mt Albert where Government is testing its mettle by dabbling with the SH20 Waterview Connection. Stephen Joyce made a good impression on TV last night, debating with a local Community Board Chair and the redoubtable Michael Tritt. Good on you Michael, for being there, we liked your work making that DVD: “Auckland - City of Cars”. How did you manage to get in there on TVNZ as a local homeowner and citizen? Well done, boy. Well said.

But it was Stephen’s show. He sat there on the screen in the background smiling benignly, telling Auckland why that road has to happen and how it has to happen. I find politicians are at their most certain and convincing when they are actually at their most ignorant. Mr Joyce has been an MP and Minister of Transport for about 6 months now. He’ll have learned a few things in that time, but I know how little I knew about transport when I got elected as Chair of Infrastructure at North Shore City Council in 2001. And I’d been deputy chair 3 years before that.

Transport and Land Use and Community Development and Land Economics are all entwined. It’s hard to get your head around. It takes time and experience. When you’re a newby to Auckland transport and land use, you don’t know what you don’t know. And that makes it easy to appear convincing on TV. As he was.

Completing the SH network has always been a reasonable policy objective. Most cities have incomplete state highway networks. Like Auckland’s most were planned in the 1960’s. Just because something is incomplete doesn’t mean the world falls apart. When I chaired Auckland’s Land Trsnsport Strategy in 2005 I was advised the waterciew connection of SH20 didn’t even have a Benefit Cost ratio of 1. But it needed to hit “3” to cross the funding threshold. It has never been a high priority.

Of course it will deliver benefits and reduce congestion. Every road does. But that logic alone would suggest roads everywhere. So now Auckland faces a Government determined to build this bit of motorway. A Government that has stream-lined RMA processes, and yesterday passed an Act establishing a Transition Agency for Auckland with statutory powers to by-pass Council decision-making.

Guess what it’s first job will be. To get Waterview motorway planning decisions done. To cut throught the red tape. Get that project underway.

I wonder whether every Cabinet Minister is in the know. Probably not. But there’s a strategy of steel behind what is happening. In a calculated and clinical way, Government is rolling back the soft, delicate and inclusive fabric of Auckland civil society, environmental care and public participation. It’s rolling back the thin layers of civilisation that have tentatively developed across Auckland since 1989.

Reacting then against the social destruction of 1980’s Rogernomics, Auckland knew it could do better for itself, its people and its communities.

Reforms since then included the RMA in 1991, which provides for environmental damage fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment for seriously bad behaviour against the environment. But it also provided for much greater involvement by people and community groups in shaping their towns, places and cities. Through District Plans, through public plan change hearings and resource consent hearings. And all of these at local level.

In addition, after local government amalgamation in 1989, Auckland’s city councils embarked on a program of social and recreational infrastructure building and investment that Auckland had never seen before.

Community activities like: bowling clubs; swimming pools; ethnic support units; youth centres; meals on wheel support; environmental enhancement and protection groups; RSA Anzac Day Service funding; heritage building protection; life saving training; and Enviro-Schools were supported and funded. (You might now understand what the pictures are about. I was invited to Takapuna Normal Intermediate School to present their Silver Award. NSCC's Monique Zwaan and Cllr Ken McKay also attended.) And there are many, many more, such organisations and community partnerships with social infrastructure to match. All supported by ratepayers and regularly consulted over. And relied on by many.

This social and community fabric is thin in Auckland. It’s a thin veneer that links people, and is the safety net for many and also for an increasingly beleagured environment. It’s very much thinner in Auckland than it is in older, mopre civilised and exemplary European cities like Stockholm. It’s thinner than in Sydney and Vancouver. It doesn’t really get measured in those surveys that put Auckland right up there as a place to live. Statistics New Zealand is still figuring out how to measure social capital, even though other cities do it regularly. But whether we measure it or not - it’s an important part of a modern city.

And all of it is put at risk by Government’s planned and clinical approach to the de-construction of Auckland’s institutional arrangements for its environmental, social and infrastructural planning. These institutions – Acts of previous Parliaments and long established councils and community groups - are what underpin Auckland civil society and civilisation.

You can hear behind closed Government doors the calls to: “get rid of that red tape”… and …. “we’ve got to make it easier to get things done in Auckland…”. I sat beside a new Cabinet Minister on a plane to Auckland. He knew who I was. This was before the election. Before he was a Minister. He was convinced it was the right thing to get rid of the ARC and the MUL and “all that red tape…”.

As an aside here, I note in the Herald this morning that Government is looking at changing the way Councils can control the MUL. Something to do with low cost housing, the Minister said. Dr Nick Smith. Now that would be consistent with building more motorways. Let’s have some more sprawl. Get that land development engine going again….

You could never build a Waterview SH20 connection in Stockholm. Or London. Or Vancouver. But it wouldn’t be “red tape” that would be blamed. It would simply be the local community having the power to control its local destiny, and everyone appreciating that was the right way of doing things. Part of living in a civil society where continuity, social fabric, local environment was of greater importance than a motorway.

Public participation and engagement in community planning and local infrastructure planning is a pre-requisite for civil society. Its existence is a key sign of a healthy democracy. Public participation is actually measured in modern cities. But here in Auckland, the fact that public interest groups are partially funded – in some cases – by local councils, the fact their access to process is enshrined in the RMA, is seen as a bad thing. Again, you can hear some say: “..surely they’ve got better things to do with their time… they should be more productive… they’re just holding up progress… just a bunch of nimbys… time we cut off their water…”.

I don’t think all Government Ministers are bad people. But I do think there is a blissful ignorance about what this Government plans doing to Auckland. And it’s extremely destructive and risky. And it will roll back Auckland’s potential for a decade or more. And that is why it must be resisted strenuously.

Those of us who can do something – write, speak, oppose, support - will have failed Auckland if we don’t act now. This is not the 1980’s. It is 2009. Yes there’s a recession and it’s all a bit hard, but it is essential that we open our eyes and our minds to what can happen to Auckland and its communities through a combination of draconian changes to the RMA, Auckland Governance, and infrastructure planning.

Enviroschools have been growing in significance and importance across Auckland for the past 10 years. They would not happen without the support of City Councils and absolutely dedicated City Council staff. Students learn about the simple things: recycling, worm-bins, picking up rubbish. They do things: plant herb gardens and vegetable gardens and native bush areas for native birds. They extend their thinking into the community: travel plans to school safe safe-cycling routes and wys to improve local roads and footpaths. They bring their ideas home to the family: electricity conservation and recycling and composting. Some of this education is linked to National curriculum requirements.

Enviroschools are likely to fall through the cracks as Government changes Auckland.

In some countries Enviroschool stuff is called civics. It’s a big part of the curriculum. It’s valued. Students are taught skills to help them work together, and develop a sense of community spirit. Other countries have a constitution. We could do with something like that here in New Zealand. A consitution that would enshrine certain public participation rights and certain pieces of legislation. Like the principles of local government. Like the bottom line for public participation.

Until then. Revolt and resist.

Wendell Cox on government amalgamation & merger

Didn't think I'd be quoting from old Wendell Cox - especially with his love of motorways and dislike of public transport. But here's what he has to say about local government amalgamation in the US and Canada....

..."Executive Summary
· Provincial governments in Canada have actively promoted municipal amalgamations with the
claim that overall costs per capita for taxpayers are lower with larger urban government units.
· An analysis of US Census data indicates the reverse, that higher expenditures per capita are
generally associated with larger municipal units and that consolidated governments are more
costly than governments typified by multiple government units.
· Many of the world’s largest and most successful urban areas have numerous local government
units. For example, the Paris area has more than 1,300 municipal governments and the Tokyo
area has more than 225.

Larger Cities are not More Efficient Cities
While people may generally like smaller municipal jurisdictions, they pay no higher price
for them. The cost efficiency justification for amalgamation rests on a foundation less
stable than a transitional Nunavut permafrost. Larger units of government do not cost
less, they cost more. Of course, the studies commissioned by ministries and politicians
bent on consolidation always produce the required “bigger is better” results. The agendaarmed
consultants proceed from their offices and count the people that they would make
redundant if they were in charge and plan on sending back the excess personal
computers. But, of course, they are never put in charge, the elimination of redundancies
never comes, and more equipment is purchased. The real purpose of their reports is
simply to produce a smoke screen thick enough that it does not dissipate before the final
bill receives assent.

Regrettably, what none of the advocates of consolidation do is to look at the actual data.
Research in the United States illustrates the point. There are 10 city-county consolidated
governments in the United States that have, at one point or another, had more than
500,000 residents. The most famous is the city of New York, composed of five boroughs
and, as in Toronto, where their consolidation was forced upon local residents by the
legislature. Local government expenditures per capita in the consolidated city of New
York are 34 percent higher than elsewhere in the state. It might be expected that New
York, as the largest consolidated government in the United States, would have government expenditures per capita that are among the lowest. But not so, they are among the highest.

Successful Metropolitan Areas have Many Local Governments
Some of the world’s most successful metropolitan areas have highly fragmented
government. Paris has seven regional governments and more than 1,300 municipal
governments. Yet Paris has developed a governance structure that effectively delivers
quality public services throughout and regional services that would be the pride of any area. Tokyo, the world’s largest metropolitan area, has more than 225 municipalities that
stretch through the parts of four provinces. The Milan area has more than 150 cities.
The best guarantee of effective local government is a populace with a strong stake in its
performance. In a smaller jurisdiction, the stake of the individual citizen or neighborhood
group can provide an important counterbalance to interests that would prefer to siphon off
the resources of local government to their own advantage. Larger governments are
harder for the citizenry to control.

It is clear that the most efficient city size is not large, but is rather no larger than middle-sized.
Ontario’s Harris government got it wrong – all wrong. If it had been studying the
evidence, it might have made 20 cities out of six. But it would not have thrown everything
together in a Megacity that can only, in the long run, make things worse for the average
citizen. Manitoba and Nova Scotia municipal amalgamations also got it wrong. Québec
has a chance to get it right....

You can see this, plus more at: http://www.fcpp.org/pdf/FB%2022%20Reassessing%20Local%20Government%20Amalgamation%20FEB%2004.pdf