Time for a rejig in City Hall
It’s a year out from the local body elections. This time next year ratepayers will have a new council sitting in Hamilton chambers.
Here are a few question voters should consider:
Why do we need councillors – who do they represent?
Are councils a 1950s model of city management now past its useby date?
Is the low voter turnout fixable? Would city business run more effectively without councillors?
Is on-line voting giving unfair electoral advantage to social media queens and kings?
The low voter turnout confirms local body politics is fake democracy. You can’t claim a ratepayer mandate from 30 per cent of the people. Local body politics is decision making done by a minority, for a minority, by a minority.
This year has been another year of council-community disconnect nationwide with poor decision making and back room deals done that should have given a mandate for ministerial intervention.
The worst example being Horowhenua District Council where councillor Ross Campbell wears a pen camera to protect his own safety from other elected members. It seems brutal bullying politics is not the sole domain of our parliament.
Then there’s Auckland where Mayor Phil Goff kept a $1m waterfront stadium report secret from councillors.
And there’s Hamilton City Council’s decision making surrounding the Peacockes’ development that may in time become this administration’s V8s.
Council downplayed the risk of borrowed government money and group-think within chambers stopped councillors voicing opposition to the venture.
Over the years, ratepayer frustration with local body politics leads to the clockwork call every three years to vote out the incumbents and start over.
Hamilton ratepayers should think back to the Braithwaite administration in the early 2000s.
History says it was a combative toxic administration with Tony Marryatt as CE. Voters turned on Braithwaite and got rid of him to be replaced by Michael Redman. He resigned the mayoralty to take up the Council chief executive role and Bob Simcock came in. Voters then turned on Redman/Simcock administration to vote in Julie Hardaker.
Hardaker’s administration was widely applauded for balancing the books only for ratepayers to later discover developer contributions were added to the day-to-day running accounts of the city. The council wasn’t in the black – it was Richard Briggs in the red.
So it was all a bit of clever accounting and number shifting that only came out after the Hardaker administration had ended.
Newly elected councillor Geoff Taylor went on the offensive in social media: ‘‘The central issue for me is that the last council – under the political direction of Julie Hardaker – stuck hard and fast to 3.8 per cent rate rises, despite the knowledge that it wasn’t able to truly balance the books. Instead the last council used revenue specifically targeted to fund growth (money that has come from land developers), to subsidise the day-today running of the city. It was within its rights to do this but by doing so was covering up a problem.’’
I wrote to Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta to ask if this was fair business to hide the true running costs of the city. Her answer; it is for the councillors to decide.
So New Zealand’s model of fake democracy needs reworking to get modern, to get relevant and to be more effective and honest. Hamilton City Council like so many others, is out of touch, out of control and out of credibility. Here are possible solutions:
1) At the start of each administration the books should be opened and a review of the past council’s plans/promises and achievements tabled for ratepayers to consider.
2) Ex-officio members should be appointed from lower social economic subdivisions to balance the middle/upper class councillors who generally make up the elected (and appointed) ranks.
3) Councillors with three terms should be excluded from standing for a fourth.
For anyone considering standing for council there is one piece of sage advice:
Ignore anything Chief Executive Richard Briggs says about the state of council’s accounts.
To this day, neither ratepayers nor councillors have received an adequate explanation about the ‘Tuesday Night Ambush’, where advice given to candidates in October confirmed the council’s books were in the black but suddenly changed in chambers at 11 o’clock at night the following March to now be in the red.
Chief executive Briggs, said: ‘‘I can confidently say that we are approaching the new council term in a much stronger financial position than at the start of the last term. We aim to work within the council’s financial limits of keeping residential rates increases to 3.8 per cent annually, balancing the books and reducing our debt, and we are achieving on all three.’’
This remains a major issue for anyone considering standing – accepting the advice and professional information given by Hamilton City Council’s $8000 a week man that proved to be so unreliable two years ago.
If ratepayers are to have faith in their council they must believe their voice is represented and being heard and acted on. They must believe in the integrity of information provided and they must see accountability.
Now is not time for current councillors to grandstand in chambers. It is time for good decision making and focusing on the city’s issues.
Twelve months and counting.
‘‘I can confidently say that we are approaching the new council term in a much stronger financial position than at the start of the last term.’’