The Big Auckland Fix Up: How big?
ANALYSIS: The job of getting Auckland back to where it was in pre-emergency times on January 26 has a name – the Big Auckland Fix Up (BAFU).
Auckland Council is looking for a top-flight manager to lead that job for the next year or more, repairing infrastructure, public spaces, roads and the utilities the city depends on.
The mayor Wayne Brown has placed himself in the lead political role for that work, underlining the scale and seriousness which he attaches to it. How wide the remit is for BAFU is not yet clear, but as days passed in early February, the complexity of a genuine fixup has become increasingly apparent.
In November 2022, the proportion of consents issued for homes to be built in ‘‘hazard zones’’ hit a two-year record, making up 18% of all residential consents in that month, 10% across the year.
The council-defined ‘‘hazard zones’’ include flood plain, floodprone areas, tsunami evacuation zones, and areas of coastal inundation and erosion zones. The data doesn’t make clear whether the proposed homes come with drainage and other measures to reduce the risk to them, but it’s just one of the red flags the council has identified among big long-term issues highlighted during the summer floods.
Coincidental to the first-ever release of that data, the council has decided to explore weaknesses so that ‘‘considered policy decisions can be made for Auckland’s current and future generations’’.
‘‘We need to work with our communities and mana whenua on adapting our communities to climate change,’’ said Richard Hills, the committee chairperson who will head the work.
The scope of that work won’t be known until March 2, but the council must also look not only at physical infrastructure, but also social infrastructure – equipping communities, especially the most vulnerable, to make change in their lives and neighbourhoods.
Budget crunch proposals to significantly cut investment in vulnerable communities need to be re-examined in that light, in addition to their merits even before the rains came.
Investing in communities over a long period of time showed its worth in South Auckland where it was perceived the council was slow in catering to the post-flood needs of some of the city’s poorest households.
Community groups and networks, led by their local politicians, created a large multi-agency centre in Māngere offering anything from clothing and food to face-to-face contact with government agencies.
They, and other communities in South Auckland’s four local board areas, and now out west, have been supported for a decade by the council’s
Southern Initiative (TSI), created as a top priority in 2012 to help tackle social and economic issues holding back lives.
TSI and its smaller, more recent western equivalent may not survive this year’s council budget under proposed community funding cuts aimed at closing a forecast $295 million deficit. It is one proposal, like scaling back temporarily the funding for environmental and water quality programmes, that looks even more out of step with the aims of the Big Auckland Fix Up.
The coming months will be crucial in determining whether BAFU is more than a physical engineering programme, repairing hardware but not the community software that makes a successful city.