A lesson for students in how not to run a city
Welcome to Educational TV. This is an attempt by our government to get young people out of their bedrooms, off their devices, away from their laptops and into the lounge – to watch TV. As someone on Twitter recently said, it takes a village to raise a child – and an entire vineyard to home-school one. This week’s topic is capital cities of the world, and today we look at Wellington.
Wellington is the world’s southernmost capital city and sits astride two massive tectonic plates. The friction between these two plates has caused massive damage. One plate is called the Left/Progressive/ Green bloc and the other the Right/Neo-Liberal/ Conservative bloc.
The Right plate stretches across the hills of Khandallah, Kelburn and through to Seatoun, while the Left plate covers Island Bay, Newtown and much of the inner city.
The city is governed by a mayor with nearly three decades of council experience. This has enabled him to closely observe ineffective and self-serving leadership from both sides over the years. Two of the biggest critics of the mayor and his council are ex-mayors – both thrown out by voters – who are experts in local body unpopularity.
The mayor was sent on an expensive leadership course where he was taught the golden rule of business: if you can’t stand the heat, call a consultant, which he did to stop the bickering caused by his council recently voting against him.
Wellington’s council is currently grappling with the Covid-19 crisis in the collegial, adult way we expect. A 22-year-old councillor with 38 years of business experience didn’t like the way a baby boomer councillor made fun of her. So, she did what any good millennial would do and complained about it on Facebook.
Meanwhile, the offended baby boomer councillor, with years of business experience but little Facebook experience, who also holds the Making Official Complaints portfolio, made an official complaint.
While these important things occurred, other councillors busied themselves with frivolous activities such as passing the Annual Plan. This is where the council decides how to spend its money over the next year. Trouble is, the council doesn’t have any money as it’s spent it on things like the convention centre and bailing out the airport.
We can’t tell you exactly how it’s spent it due to commercial sensitivity – businesses are very sensitive to angry ratepayers finding out how much rates money is going to them.
The Left bloc didn’t want to make spending cuts; the Right didn’t want to increase rates. Surely a compromise would be a zero-rates increase and not to cut spending? The council could have used the money in the bank it had saved for a rainy day to pay for this. Unfortunately, Wellington has already had a town hall rainy day, a convention centre rainy day, an airport rainy day, and a water pipes rainy day. Wellington has had more rainy days than the Amazon Basin.
Although he campaigned against rate increases, the mayor realised that if he froze rates he would have to make unpopular spending cuts, so he deployed the second great piece of business advice he learned on his leadership course – ‘‘If you can’t beat ’em join ’em’’ – and voted for a rates increase.
Meanwhile, the regional economy is in desperate need of stimulating. WellingtonNZ, formerly Wreda, has created hundreds of highly paid jobs in the region in recent times – all at Wreda. Its latest stimulus plan is to hire its third CEO in three years. It is well known that CEO-hiring helps jump-start recruitment businesses, the office furniture industry, and the allimportant hospitality trade.
Wellington sits astride two massive tectonic plates. One is called the Left/Progressive/ Green bloc and the other the Right/NeoLiberal/ Conservative bloc.
Though times are tough, Wellington can also look forward to some great new infrastructure. Transmission Gully is a wonderful piece of highway that will allow commuters to whizz into Wellington, then wait at the congested Terrace Tunnel for a few hours.
The project is a public-private partnership, which means that, if it makes a profit, the private sector pockets it, and if makes a loss then the public sector foots the bill. Unfortunately, because of the four-week lockdown, it looks like Transmission Gully will be a year or two late, but let’s not forget that projects like Transmission Gully create many jobs – for Australian construction workers.
Wellington’s bus network used to run beautifully, so the city’s regional councillors decided to change it. However, a new group of regional councillors will fix the problem. No longer will frustrated residents stand at bus stops and watch packed buses drive past. Thanks to Covid-19, residents will stand at bus stops and watch half-empty buses drive past.
Wellington also has many excellent educational institutions, the best known of which is Victoria University, which recently changed its name to Victoria Zoomiversity. This university runs excellent online courses and, until recently, offered students rooms for only $150 a week, the only condition being that you’re not allowed to stay in them.
If you think it is insane to pay hotels to have empty beds and airports to have empty runways, stay tuned.