Where can Chch swing the axe on spending?
It’s crunch time in the red zone and I don’t mean because of the carpets of autumn leaves from the deciduous exotics that dominate the riversides and clog up the waterways. Nor do I mean the impending exhibition ‘‘Red Zone Futures’’ from Regenerate Christchurch which will run from 26 May to 30 June in Cashel Mall, one of the last major opportunities for community input as the agency finalises its Regeneration Plan for the O¯ ta¯ karo Avon River Corridor (OARC).
No, I’m referring to transitional uses and activation events.
It is now well signalled that the vision for the red zone as a city-to-sea multipurpose river park with a substantial ‘‘green spine’’ snaking through the centre as a default, is a given. It is also acknowledged that realising the full extent of the regeneration plan will take decades to complete.
After some years of advocacy by community, the Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Megan Woods recently announced the option to consider leases and licences for up to five years for transitional projects in the OARC which makes investment in such projects much more feasible. Transitional projects by Gap Filler, Greening the Rubble and FESTA brought the central city alive during the rebuild – and continue to do so. The red zone lands are only just now entering this activation phase and similar transitional projects are urgently needed to bring life back to the heart of the east.
Avon-O¯ ta¯ karo Network started the process by initiating Te Ara O¯ ta¯ karo, the transitional river trail, in partnership with Regenerate Christchurch and Christchurch City Council, and the mahinga kai exemplar in partnership with Nga¯ i Tahu. Richmond Community Garden is another good example of transitional use and events like Childrens Day, Polyfest, Matariki in the Zone, Red Zone 6 and Meet in the Middle are indicators of what can be done on a more regular basis.
There are many community proposal proponents wanting to get events and transitional projects off the ground but navigating compliance and funding matters takes time and resources.
The processes for approving projects are also illdefined and fraught with competing priorities and different agencies vying for control.
There are two primary land owners involved, the Crown, who use Land Information NZ (LINZ) as their manager, and the Council, and one primary planning agency, Regenerate Christchurch. One agency needs to take leadership here and the Avon-O¯ ta¯ karo Network believes that should be Regenerate Christchurch.
Decisions about what transitional projects and events to progress should be assessed according to the vision for the corridor and the regeneration objectives already agreed with communities, not determined primarily by expeditious land management priorities. And to prevent ad hoc piecemeal activity there needs to be some oversight to ensure there is a coherence to the whole and reference to the longer term.
The corridor for the time-being is a giant sandpit – a place to play with ideas, experiment, and enjoy ourselves while we wait for the bigger longer-term plans to come to fruition. The former could greatly inform the final design of the latter.
However to make this work we need everyone working together as one, community, iwi and agencies, all working with the same vision in mind. We need a culture within the agencies of finding ways to say yes rather than no. For example, do we really require a new 20-page Health & Safety Plan every time we lead a guided walk through the red zone?
Finally, we need the political will from our ministers, MPs, mayor and councillors, and agency boards to make this an urgent priority and if necessary bang some heads together. This shouldn’t be this hard.
Evan Smith is the Avon-O¯ ta¯ karo Network spokesperson.
As the city council gears up for the business end of the Long Term Plan (LTP) deliberations, how much political will is there to cauterise the hemorrhaging to ratepayers’ back pockets? The current trajectory portends to an average annual rates increase of 6 per cent, when you factor in the Christ Church Cathedral levy and the increased funding bid by ChristchurchNZ.
The draft LTP doesn’t project rates hikes dipping below 4.5 per cent for at least a decade.
Last week, the city’s community boards fronted council with their respective wish lists. If you were hoping they’d jaw-bone councillors to flatten the rates track, dream on.
No, the community boards collectively amassed an extra $50 million in flight-of- fancy funding requests. Moreover, the Edgeware Pool group, which has previously led the city to believe it didn’t expect the council to build the facility, now wants the ratepayer to cough up $5m.
Only Karolyn Potter, chair of the SpreydonCashmere board, identified a potential cost saving for council, calling for the Lincoln Rd widening project to be ditched, which would save $8m.
While some councillors – like regional fuel taxcrusading Vicki Buck – are dreaming up new ways to milk even more cash out of you, I’ve been inviting councillors to nominate cost-savings proposals. If they really want to bend the arc on rate rises, where would they make the cuts, if it was their call? I contacted a wide selection of councillors, yet none of the left-leaners were forthcoming with any cost-savings plans.
Cr Sara Templeton copped-out on the grounds that it would be inappropriate to comment while oral submissions from residents are being heard.
Mike Davidson, who last year spoke out against the proliferation of suburban pools, didn’t offer any specific cuts. He’d rather focus on ‘‘exploring new revenue streams’’, and calling for the Government to cough up a sizeable sum of GST revenue, generated by the city’s rebuild. Fat chance.
However, he is open to fresh consideration of divesting a minority stake in council companies, to strategic partners. You may recall that Davidson was elected to council in 2016, pledging to ‘‘keep rate increases below inflation by removing unnecessary spending.’’ As one of the more rabid champions of escalating the cycleway network funding to $209m, it’s a hell of a change in tune.
Fresh from ruffling feathers in the city’s botox capital of Merivale, Cr Aaron Keown fired me through a laundry list of ideas.
‘‘Almost every council facility we have recently built or are about to is way over spec. Why are we building Ferraris when Toyotas would more than do the job?’’
Keown strongly questions the need for ‘‘so many pools, so many libraries and so many parks’’. ‘‘Christchurch has more than 1000 parks and reserves, we get more every year and the maintenance is failing.’’
He also takes aim at the contractor system, which all have their own boards and management structure with a ‘‘chief executive often paid twice the council’s CEO’’. ‘‘It hasn’t delivered better outcomes because contractors don’t have the same sense of city pride that in-house staff do,’’ he said.
Keown believes rates rises should be locked to inflation and the current ‘‘faux consultation’’ on the LTP is all about justifying our spending, not exploring ways to reduce expenditure. Boom.
Cr Jamie Gough was also particularly effusive with a litany of fiscal restraint proposals, denouncing the rates track as ‘‘unfair, unsustainable and unacceptable’’.
He’d scrap the living wage; defer, if not indefinitely suspend An Accessible City (saving $44 million); revisit the Capital Release programme; and defer Linwood Pool, given the metro sports facility will be ‘‘literally 10 minutes down the road and one suburb over’’.
The new Linwood and Hornby pools will cost more than $40m to build and millions more in operational losses, as suburban pools suck $9m in annual operational costs. Shouldn’t our pools operate on a fiscally neutral basis? Gough’s wider argument is the current LTP approach is broken and we need to launch a new era of ‘‘zero-based budgeting’’, not the rate-and-spend approach.
You may recall I’ve questioned whether the council’s $352m budget for ‘‘Strategic Planning & Policy’’, should be ripe for the picking. To invoke Shane Jones, could it not be ‘‘treacle-ridden’’?
Council chief executive Karleen Edwards tells me her organisation, employing 2100 full-time staff, ‘‘will always look for efficiencies … but the last thing we want to do is run down public services. Our challenge is to ensure the public see value in the services we deliver.’’
Do we?