Councillors on the Auckland Council are having a pretty busy month at the moment. Not only are they wading through listening to many hundreds (possibly thousands) of submitters on the Auckland Spatial Plan, but they’re also making really critical funding decisions about the 10 year Long Term Plan. The Long Term Plan guides how councils spend ratepayers’ money, how high rates will be, what rating systems will be used and so forth.
The Draft Long-Term Plan will go to public consultation early next year, but the detail of what ends up in that Draft Plan have been hammered out through a few marathon sessions of the council’s Strategy and Finance Committee over the past few weeks as they discuss and make amendments to the basic plan put forward by Mayor Len Brown.
The minutes of these marathon sessions makes for quite interesting reading, as we can see which councillors supported and which opposed certain proposed additions to the baseline plan. There are a lot of additional projects added in, which suggests that some changes to baseline funding plans will need to be made – but this is to be expected as the priorities of the old councils may be somewhat different to areas of priority for the new unified council.
A lot of the debates between councillors seem to be around rating policies, and this is to be expected as bringing together the different rating systems of the old councils is likely to be one of the toughest things the Council will have to do in its first term. But there are also some interesting notes about transport matters, which begin with the big one: funding of the City Rail Link. Here’s what the minutes say about that project:
There are 21 councillors, so Councillor Northey (who would have voted for the motion) and Councillor Quax (who probably would have voted against it) were absent from this particular vote. It’s good to know that the council is very close to being unified in support of the City Rail Link – even when it comes to the difficult matter of committing serious cash towards its completion.
Turning to other transport matters, some other key decisions went through unanimously – which is great:
There are some important projects funded in here – an increase in subsidy to continue dealing with rising public transport demand and also to help ensure public transport can make a real difference as part of the Southern Initiative; funding for school travel and safety plans (surely the best value for money investment in the entire long term plan), some money to construct the extension of the Wynyard Quarter tram to Britomart (hopefully enough to include a bridge) and finally some funding set aside to secure the route for rail to the airport.
As I noted at the start of this post, this certainly isn’t the final version of the Long Term Plan, and will be open for public consultation in the not too distant future. However, in general it’s good to know that most of the council is on the same page when it comes to transport priorities.
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I’d be interested to here the reasons why Wood and Brewer opposed the CBD rail link.
Wood because he still believes he is only serving the narrowly defined interests of one area; the North Shore and that means opposing anything that doesn’t immediately happen there [head in last century]. And Brewer because he’s a class warrior for the already over-entitled [head in….].
Yes, it would be interesting to hear their alternatives given that neither can really be uninformed on the issues:
-George Wood is a Northern Busway user (he has complained in the herald about personally being left at the station by full buses)…he must therefore see the efficiencies of PT, but also the mess the current at grade system is.
-Cameron Brewer uses trains, so must know first hand of the growing role they play in Auckland, as well as the rapid growth and impending overcrowding issues.
I hope the following is correct, and please correct me if I am wrong:
1) the division carried by 17 votes to 2 means that the council has agreed to set aside $1.2bn to fund the CBD rail link, which will be spent if the government agrees to match it, and consultation will also occur on other sources of money.
2) opex means operating expenditure (money on an ongoing basis) and capex means capital expenditure (on new infrastructure)
3) C and D mean the council has set aside money to fully fund extending the tram to Britomart, and to allocate a route and purchase land for the rail link to the airport
4) No set date has been set for the above projects yet, the britomart tram extension and land purchases for the airport rail link will be complete within the next 10 years (i.e. by 2021)
Unfortunately they haven’t set aside $1.2b as they dont have that sort of money to set aside. I guess it means they will raise rates and borrow if and when required to. Does the council treasury issue public forecasts? It would be interesting to see this.
I think the Council Treasury does issue public forecasts, however if they do not I suppose one could file a Local Government Offical Information Act request?
Any case as for Cr Wood and Brewer opposing – I probably could understand why. Personally and as in my submission, I defered the CRL as a priority two need with a completion around 2025 (2030 in the volcanic rock proves to be a total — ) with what I call Capacity Building Projects to be done before 2018 at around $200m est first. Reason for deferal, Standard and Poors was enough to raise an eyebrow and keep an eye on things fiscal wise as well as a few other reasons I had outlined in my submission and hearing pannel presentation.
Any case, we wait and see (and submit)
By 2030 we will be looking at an extra 500,000 residents and still no significant upgrade to PT. Once the EMUs come on the stream we will be stuck with 2014 capacity for up to 15 years under your plan. Meanwhile money will continue to be chucked at new state highways. Why should rail and not road suffer because of the downgrade.
The CRL is a capacity building project which will deliver huge economic benefits for the city and ‘unlock’ the rest of Auckland’s latent rail capacity – something that the equally expensive Holiday Highway won’t do or bring. If Standards and Poors downgrade Auckland’s credit rating for proposing projects that make huge economic sense and turn a blind eye to vast sums of money being spent on highways with no economic benefits then that suggests they’re methods or evaluation are flawed (something already demonstrated by their A+ rating of junk bonds prior to the WFC). Regardless, I don’t think the opinions of some pencil pushers at a foreign ratings agency is what Auckland should be basing it’s future on.
*their methods of
The difference is one is being fully funded by a government with annual revenue of $50b, the other is being half funded by a council with annual revenue of $2b
Ben- To understand how Standard and Poors works, try watching a doco “Inside Job”-
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/combined
Won the Oscar last year. Explain how the big 3 Ratings Agencies assign risk.
Turns out all Auckland Council has to do is pay S and P more fees and the downgrade will go away.
Sweet deal no?
17-2. I hope that ends up on a memo for the out of touch transport minister.
Matt, he’d probably respond with something like this: “What would a bunch of small time community leaders and communists know about transport? They are populists pandering to the demands of a tiny vocal minority who refuse to move into the 21st century.” *cue maniacal laugh*
Job done already…
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/6028792/New-York-Times-praises-Auckland-subway
I notice they have included “the purchase of two new units” in the $ 8 million to extend the Britomart tram. I thought they got the units on loan from the tram museum in Bendigo? Or are they actually looking at purchasing a couple of new trams?