RICHARD NORTHEY, WAITEMATA LOCAL BOARD

The Waitematā Local Board met on 20 April. It was a very busy meeting.

We heard deputations and public forum presentations from John Fay about the future of the Olympic Pool, from Kate O’Neill about the community event celebrating our great new playground at Home Street Reserve in Arch Hill, and also a detailed report about her work from our Councillor Pippa Coom. The meeting approved updated priorities for our Local Board Grants Programme, discussed our views on the Auckland Regional Land Transport Programme - which we encourage you to give feedback to Auckland Transport on now, received a performance report on the Waitemata Local Board’s current projects, and debated and set down our views on Council’s Statement of Expectation for CCOs, the Animal Management Bylaw, the Regional Fuel Tax Scheme, the Public Trading and Events Bylaw, the Unit Titles Amendment Bill, the Navigation Rules for the Waitemata Harbour and the Gulf, the Council’s Code of Conduct and the National Parking Management Guidelines.

We reviewed our Waitemata Local Board portfolios and created a new portfolio of Maori Outcomes to reflect our new first outcome in our new Waitemata Local Board plan and appointed member Kerrin Leoni of Ngati Paoa to that position. Our other portfolio holders were reaffirmed. We thanked Kerrin Leoni for her work and loyal support to the Board as Deputy-Board Chair and welcomed member Alex Bonham to her planned succession to that position from the end of April until the end of the Board’s term next year.

On 11 April I spoke on video to carry out a virtual naming and opening of the new Amey Daldy Park and playground in the Wynyard Quarter. The upgraded play space at Home Street Reserve has been reopened by a community organised event and gives children of all ages, including basketballers, a long planned upgraded playground and recreation space in Arch Hill.

Following the Board’s adoption of a strategic plan for the Western Springs Lakeside Te Wai Orea Park, the playground on the zoo side of the lake has been designed by local designer Nina and rebuilt with a nature theme. On Saturday 17 April Nick Hawke of Ngati Whatua Orakei and Adriana Avendaño Christie, the Waitemata Local Board’s parks portfolio holder, spoke to lead a celebration of the reopening of this wonderful, renewed playground, surrounded by hundreds of thrilled children and families. It is intended to reopen the forest on the eastern side of the Park once the aging pines are taken out. Removal of the pines has begun and will take place over the next two months, with some being dragged out along a narrow track created for the purpose, and some left to rot down as a home for wildlife. Then the regeneration and planting of a native forest, with community participation, will be progressed.

Western Springs playground

I have proposed a remit to the Local Government New Zealand National Conference urging government urgently to change the law so councils can bring back their General Tree Protection policies.

As well as their Regional Land Transport Programme, Auckland Transport is currently consulting on detailed plans to improve the streetscape and safe use of Great North Road for all road users. Please access Auckland Transport’s website and click, “Have your say on the Great North Road improvements”, to respond by 7 May. An artist’s impression is shown.

Ponsonby community and business members are meeting regularly to develop low-cost tactical improvements to Ponsonby Road as part of the Innovating Streets programme.

Thank you for all of you who gave feedback on the Auckland Council’s proposed Long-Term Plan and Budget. The Waitemata Local Board members and staff are now carefully reading the views and ideas coming from people and organisations in our area. We will then be reviewing our own budget and work programme, taking your views into account. Our next Board Meeting will be on Tuesday 18 May held at the Board Office at 52 Swanson Street, Covid willing. People can take part either in person or by Skype. (RICHARD NORTHEY)  PN

I can be contacted at 021 534 546 or richard.northey@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz

JOHN ELLIOTT: WHAT IS WRONG WITH AUCKLAND COUNCIL?

Ask anyone what they think about how our city is run and you will hear the same story over and over again; Auckland is far too large, so council is remote from people. The bureaucrats don’t listen. They wouldn’t know genuine consultation if it hit them in the face.

You will also hear specific criticisms. Fancy fifty beaches unswimmable –that’s third world ignore.

Of course Covid-19 had a devastating effect on Council finances. But the problem goes right back to the way the Auckland Super City was established. Fancy having Council Controlled Organisations with no accountability to the Council, a separate board who meet in secret, no councillors appointed to them, with hundreds of bureaucrats making decisions without any consultation. Not to mention too many unaccountable, overpaid staff, impossible to contact (he’s in a meeting), and remote from most local situations anyway.

But I think there is a deeper problem, and it’s around the meaning and application of democracy. This Council, and particularly AT, gets ahead of itself, and doesn’t take the public with it. Part of it is the unaccountable CCOs, but it’s more than that. Too many Auckland Council staff are trying to socially engineer us, telling us what is good for us, and getting too far ahead of public opinion. They present plans, telling us they are up for consultation.

After so-called consultation, they make no changes anyway. We are to do as we are told. Or, like cunning developers, they call for 10 carparks to be removed, and after consultation, compromise by removing ‘only’ five.

Pippa Coom once called a similar exercise in Grey Lynn shops on Great North Road ‘a win win’. How can a loss of five carparks be a ‘win win’?

AT’s street plan for Ponsonby Road looks like a plan to get as many cars off Ponsonby Road as possible, never mind the damage to businesses. Cars have got to go. Unfortunately, public transport hasn’t so far filled the gap.

I can’t get to my butcher or my barber by public transport and it’s too far to walk. Perhaps that’s OK. I’m eating less meat and I don’t need a very frequent hair cut. But those businesses are only a half hour walk at a brisk pace - something beyond me at 82.

I proposed to our Councillor Pippa Coom small busses for twelve or so people, criss crossing through our streets to save oil and retire more cars. She did not agree, saying it was too hard to coordinate and that drivers were the greatest cost.

We have to do something to get old blokes like me out of our cars, but if public transport is not good enough, we’ll continue to drive with some of us becoming a hazard on our roads.

It’s not easy. New Zealand has roads built for cars. We have more cars per citizen than any country except the USA.

But I go back to my supposition. AT is getting ahead of itself, which leads to authoritarian behaviour in a democracy supposedly run by a left leaning government. It’s up to this Labour government to rein them in. Amend how Auckland functions if need be, and ensure democracy is not hijacked by a council telling us what is best for us, before we are ready.

Take the public with you Auckland Transport, and revolution can be averted. (JOHN ELLIOTT)  PN

JOHN ELLIOTT: WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT HOUSING?

We are now thousands of houses short in New Zealand, and Auckland is fairing among the worst cities. Labour has not worked out to how to solve the problem, and has been getting plenty of stick from National and commentators like Mike Hosking.

Labour certainly have not delivered, but there is more to the problem than meets the eye. It is a problem going back many years, confronting a number of past governments of both stripes.

National is the biggest culprit having sold off state houses willy nilly during Roger Douglas’s time. They were seduced by the mantra that called for governments to get their hands off what private enterprise could do better. It didn’t work, and house price inflation has now pushed thousands of young people out of home ownership possibilities. The major problem is the price of land.

When I built my first house in Northcote in 1968 it cost $12,500, five times my salary as a young teacher. Now, in Auckland, young couples need ten times the average wage to buy half a house. With a household income of $150,000 and a deposit of 20%, they would need to borrow $800,000 a crippling amount to pay off. Most just can’t do it.

There are two main ways to build more homes, up or out.

Apartments and town houses are proliferating in central Auckland, and there is a general agreement that urban sprawl is bad. We should not be covering up good agricultural land on our city fringes. Just today (16 April) a new report outlines the productive farm land already covered in houses. It also bemoans the exponential increase in dairying and fertiliser use, polluting our waterways. Now we hear about material shortages - both internal and from overseas - delaying building times. We are also told there are not enough builders, and not enough apprentices. These are all the result of the short-termism of successive governments.

‘Not this year’, is a common government mantra. Let’s have longer local and central government terms. Of course, longer terms are OK if your lot are in power, but it can seem like forever if the government is not of your choosing, and seems to be there forever. Still, we need longer term planning in all fields than three years. So after that diatribe how do we produce enough houses? I have a couple of suggestions.

Shared equity: let a young couple take a share in a new house, maybe 40 or 50%, with the government holding the remaining shares. As the couple progress they can buy further equity in the property, until they own it outright.

The second way is for government to buy land and sell it to first home buyers at a discounted price. This is similar to shared equity. The land might be in new hubs, land judged suitable for housing with services, industry and commercial buildings adjacent. These would be hubs outside major metropolitan areas and not on the best agricultural land.