If CAB had a squeakier wheel, it might be safer

Because I grew up in Brooklyn before it became trendy, my older siblings sometimes had friends who got in trouble with the police or had tenancy and immigration issues.

My educated parents sometimes helped, and I heroically filled out a form and forged a signature when only 9 so my Pasifika friend, whose parents didn’t speak English, could join the library.

However, a lot of the time Mum was fond of saying, ‘‘Tell them to visit the Citizens Advice Bureau [CAB]. They’re very good and they’re free.’’ For years, this dedicated bunch of volunteers have been helping people with all manner of problems.

That’s why local bodies, including Wellington City Council (WCC), which gave them $210,787 last year, have supported CABs. But recently, the Wellington organisation found itself to be the last CAB off the WCC funding rank. The council has offered $103,500 for the next six months, with no guarantee after that.

So what does the CAB do? It says its services include ‘‘helping with inquiries about emergency accommodation, noisy neighbours, overhanging trees, abandoned vehicles, relationship issues, consumer rights, tenancy rights, employment rights, and local services. CAB also takes referrals from the city council and helps people to fill in council forms’’. That’s all.

So why cut a service full of ‘‘hardcore frontline’’ people, as Rongotai MP Paul Eagle calls them, that appears to be doing a great job for the vulnerable? The council wants to see only mobile branches – such as caravans – and wants CAB to come up with a new service model. As anyone who accessed the old mobile library knows, reading Dickens during a southerly storm is an absolute delight.

Chief executive Kerry Dalton argues that the CAB has ‘‘got experience that shows us that it’s having service delivered consistently from the same place that is the most effective thing, because people know where to go and when the service is going to be there’’. The numbers back Dalton up, and they also show that younger people engage well with the CAB.

But surely these CABs are taking up valuable space, such as the one next to Clark’s cafe in the Central Library, which could be housing council bureaucrats designing ways to increase the corporate subsidy to Singapore Airlines, dreaming up schemes to pay for the cost increases for the Film Museum and Convention Centre, and seeking funding for a $200 million indoor stadium that would host at least three international acts a year.

Some councillors have questioned whether the CAB reaches those most in need. According to Brian Dawson, ‘‘there are some very deprived communities in Wellington, so we want to make sure that they are reaching the most vulnerable people’’. So who is successfully reaching the most vulnerable people – church-based charities?

Dawson also wants CAB to improve access to its services so ‘‘there was less duplication’’. Fair enough, but why is all this so sudden? Where was the genuine consultation? Apparently, the CAB was not effectively consulted by the council but was simply told what was going to happen about a month ago. Why not give the CAB a year’s funding and start a genuine process of engagement.

If the CAB was a cycleway, you could guarantee that the squeaky wheel would be well oiled, and we would have drop-in centres and co-design seminars for Africa. But the Oriental Bay Residents’ Association is hardly likely to threaten legal action on the CABs’ future, so there is little engagement.

Councillors have said little until now. I suspect this is a case of council officers deciding they know what is good for us and getting sympathetic councillors on board – just like they have done with other issues. The wagging staff tail seems to have convinced the democratically elected dog that it needs to nix the CAB.

Meanwhile, the CAB has not thrown its toys out of the cot or stormed out of meetings, but has quietly started a petition that has attracted more than 4000 signatures. (If you don’t know how to sign an online petition, you might like to visit a CAB and they’ll help you.)

So what will happen next? When council staff have shown bad judgment in the past, the mayor has made an often correct, though undemocratic, ‘‘captain’s call’’. Will he do so again? Let’s hope he persuades his fellow councillors that the CAB is vitally important and deserves more than six months’ probation. Yes, the CAB could definitely improve, and I suspect it knows it, so start an engagement process without threats.

I noticed last week that some councillors who care about the weak and vulnerable crowed about how successful their signing-off of the Long-Term Plan has been. Great, but perhaps next time increasing the budget for recreational and social funding pools, and decreasing the amounts for corporate welfare and expensive edifices that might promote tourism, could be a better idea than closing down CABs.

If the CAB was a cycleway, you could guarantee that the squeaky wheel would be well oiled.