Yesterday at the Regional Governance committee, the Auckland City submission was signed off and will go to council for final ratification before we present to the government.
Here's what was passed at the meeting:
- A maximum of 21 wards for locally elected councillors
- A minimum of 8 at large elected councillors
- A Mayor, who is able to appoint their own Deputy, as well as the major committee chairs
- The Mayor determining the high level vision for the city
- Around 20-30 local boards, indicating that the local government commission will be best placed to determine the exact number based on communities of interest.
- Local boards have an appropriate budget
- No specially elected Maori seats, but an acknowledgment of a Mana Whenua advisory role
- Ward boundaries be flexible to deal with population changes, but local boards may be relatively fixed to follow communities of interest
Ideas we rejected at the meeting (City Vision-Labour proposals) included:
- STV as the ballot method (too complex, no history of STV in Auckland, has worked poorly for the DHB elections and has been lacking support in previous referendum attempts in Auckland)
- renaming local boards as local councils, with obviously increased powers
- Maori seats
- The deputy mayor being appointed by the council
- widening the number of local boards to that of 15-35
One other issue we might further explore in our submission is the proposal to the Royal Commission that Auckland City made on area committees. This is a mechanism which would enable ward councillors in the respective north, south, centre and west of the city get together and work and plan on issues more relevant to those areas.
The council meeting is tomorrow night, so the submission should be passed then, and then onto the select committee.
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Auckland City's regional governance submission
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6 comments:
Just kind of curious on a few things:
1) How come a "minimum" when it comes to at large councillors and a "maximum" when it comes to ward councillors? Most of the rest of the world seems to be pretty much against at large councillors. It's hard not to suspect that C&R would support them for political purposes only.
2) Does the submission ask for increased powers for the local boards? Even the government seems to be moving towards this (ie. setting in law their roles etc. etc.)
3) Does the ACC support matching up wards and/or local boards with electorate boundaries? It seems to make sense to me.
If you're interested, my submission is here: http://transportblog.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Auckland-Council-Bill-submission-final.pdf
Is there anything much in the ACC submission that asks for the government's current proposal to be changed? Seems like a rubber stamp to me...
Aaron,
I like the idea of area boards, living in Albany it would be silly if for example the Browns Bay Board was singing for a completely different song sheet.
It is a good way to get a gasp of what a local area does want/need/view.
Hi Josh,
1. We wanted to be general, rather than prescriptive.
By rest of the world, you don't include the Royal Commissioners themselves, who argued for 10 at large councillors. They favoured such an approach because it would focus Auckland on regional issues. We agreed with that, though obviously the other cities disagreed.
2. Yes, we do note that local boards should operate differently to that of community boards, I have indicated previously my desire for them to have more funding to deliver on local projects, beyond that of SLIPS as we know it.
3. No. I don't support exact matches for wards and board boundaries with that of parliamentary boundaries.
The reason is that boards are supposed to represent communities of interest, which could be much smaller geographical areas than that of an electorate. For example, Waiheke and Great Barrier would be logical local boards. So might Hunua or Devonport as distinct areas with communities of interest. I would personally prefer more boards than wards under a new Auckland Council.
As for why local wards should not match parliamentary seats, there are a couple of reasons why not. While it may be easy in the short run, it could cause all sorts of headaches in the future when populations change. Remember that the number of Parliamentary seats depends on a statistical anomaly with the South Island. Also, boundaries could well change dramatically every five years or so with the census, meaning new seats being created, or boundaries being pushed north and south of their present suggestions. So that would cause confusion and headache down the line.
There is another argument that says by having councillors and MPs represent exactly the same district, we might create political tensions between the two levels. I'm not sure I agree with that, but I can see the point that it might be viewed as an escalator up and down for political parties. Perhaps this happens now already, but it would become more formalised.
it would also probably invite the major parties to take over local government - National vs Labour, rather than the hybrid centre-left and centre-right tickets at the moment.
We do endorse a number of the government suggestions, but I think in some ways this is just coincidental. The suggestion we made for 21 + 8 councillors mirrors that of our original submission to the Royal Commission. So does our suggestion for "neighbourhood boards" (now local boards). Our position of 21 + 8 varies significantly from that of the governments 12 +8 councillors.
Will you be doing a post Aaron, on how you rate the sheer power and influence of the Mayor of the new City:
That is will he/she have say 70% of the grunt that say PM Key has.
I ask this because it seem that local Government Councils come under less scrutiny than National Government.
So for instance if you are Bob Parker, Mayor elect of Canterbury; you can buy what you like and oush the people this way or that,
Why are we limiting Board numbers to thirty. If you give Devonport,Waiheke and Gt Barrier all boards, its going to be hard to deny places like Waiuku, Port Albert, Wellsford, Matakana, Warkworth, Helensville etc..
Thanks for your replies Aaron. I do see where you're coming from on a number of issues, although I think it's worth pointing out the following:
1)My understanding was that the Royal Commission suggested the 50/50 split of at-large councillors because they were keeping the local councils very strong. Therefore, in order to counter-balance the parochialism of the local councils, it was necessary to have a more "region wide" viewpoint on the Auckland Council. As the local boards will inevitably be much less powerful than the local councils would have been (even if the legislation is changed to get them some powers that are enshrined in law), then the justification for the at large councillors seems to have disappeared. It's hard not to think that the at large councillors are being retained for political purposes only (especially considering the history of Auckland City Council before the ward system was established). Getting voters to choose 8 councillors out of a list of potentially 40-50 also seems pretty suspect - maybe I would have good chance at getting on the council as my surname starts with an A.
2)The role of the local boards seems like it will be the main debating point. In the current legislation it certainly seems like they are less powerful than existing community boards (in fact one section of the Bill says they're specifically not community boards, and only unincorporated societies or something like that). Whilst I am hugely supportive of centralising planning and transport issues, I think that in terms of service delivery there should be an assumption that the local board does it unless there's a good reason for the Auckland Council to do it, rather than the other way around.
3) Regarding ward boundaries and electorate boundaries and local board boundaries, I think it would just be enormously confusing to not match up - at the very least - ward boundaries and local board boundaries. The gulf islands are a tricky issue, but perhaps we could use their population as the basis for what the size of a ward and a local board should be. I understand the issues about also matching with electorate boundaries - but I think overall the pros outweigh the cons on that issue (Gulf Islands situation notwithstanding).
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