Tomorrow will be a very significant and important day in the history of Auckland – being the day that we first have a Mayor of the new “Auckland Council” and a council itself which represents the whole of the Auckland region – rather than a fragmented system of local government that has plagued the city forever. On the whole, while I still have some reservations about the details, I think that the change to becoming a Super City is a step in the right direction. There are a few reasons for this feeling:
- For once Auckland will be able to speak with one voice when it comes to dealing with central government. As I noted a few days ago, between now and 2050 around 75% of New Zealand’s population growth will be in Auckland – which means that most of the country’s new infrastructure spend should happen here (especially in terms of transport infrastructure). It’s going to take a very loud and united voice to make that happen.
- I always felt that the old city councils, with populations of between 200,000 and 400,000 were quite simply just the wrong size. They were too big to provide the ‘personal’ type of council that was so well appreciated in places like Papakura, yet too small to truly tackle region-wide problems: like sorting out Auckland’s transport system.
- I feel that the Local Boards, a useful place for them in local government can be found, could prove to be exceptionally useful in tackling the issues that council bureaucracies can struggle with – like ensuring your footpaths get well looked after, ensuring that the road engineers at Auckland Transport don’t widen your local road to fit more cars down it at peak times and so forth.
- If the Auckland Transport CCO is well managed, and its internal structure doesn’t turn out to be the roadsfest that I unfortunately hear rumours might be the case, then having an integrated transport agency that can stand a bit independent from the everyday rough and tumble of politics could be extremely good for advancing important transport plans. Now that the same authority that benefits from bus lanes is in charge of putting them in we might get around to actually seeing our Quality Transit Network being implemented – instead of ignored.
There are still many many questions to be answered about how the details of the Super City will work themselves out. Much of this will come down to the result of tomorrow – who will be the Mayor? Will they be prepared to take on central government to get a better deal for public transport in Auckland? What will be the structure of the council in terms of its committees? Who will be the councillors that end up on the board of the Transport CCO?
I will try to blog as soon as I know the results – which I think are likely to be posted in reasonable detail here from midday tomorrow.
Processing...
With Brown in charge and a left-leaning council, I think the future for the local boards is looking very bright indeed. Meaningful delegated powers, and hopefully a push from the council in a year or two’s time to enshrine those powers into legislation; especially if National get the boot next year.
As for Transport, with Mike Lee on the board I hope we’ll see a strong push toward public transport, especially now that Brown can sack any or all of them if he doesn’t like where they’re taking things.
I do not believe Brown has the ability to sack the board just yet – didn’t the law give some of the inital board members (selected by Mr “I’ve been given a mandate to decide about Auckland” Rodney Hide) minimum term durations?