Unexpected damage to the next budget
ANALYSIS: Auckland’s devastating floods are about to start having political consequences as the council gets into the detail of next year’s budget – itself an unprecedented challenge even before the rain came.
There’s the obvious challenge: how to meet the cost of flood repairs, damaged infrastructure, council facilities and public spaces such as parks, when the starting point was already a $130 million spending cut.
The bigger political challenge will be the dynamics and relationships between councillors, the mayor and local board members, and the sense of commitment to communities who have been through the wringer.
The budget proposed by Wayne Brown before Christmas, and signed off with one dissenting vote, to move to the next stage of public consultation in March, now faces new questions.
Brown’s desire to keep an average rate rise of 4.6% was achievable only by a temporary reduction in targeted rates to improve water quality and the environment. Some of that work – improving streams and waterways, as well as local drainage – suddenly looks more urgent and, despite assurances about how the programme would still get done eventually, delaying work now seems out of step with the new times.
Even if the targeted rate programme has to be temporarily paused due to the demands of repairs, reducing the flow of cash available for when work can ramp up needs closer questioning.
Some councillors, in the antediluvian times of December 2022, had thought a lower rates rise than the proposed 4.6% could be explored, but the floods have changed all that.
The value of higher rates rises will have to be considered in a new light – every additional 1% will cost the owner of an average value home less than 60 cents a week and generate about $20m additional every year into eternity.
The cost of living focus of 2022 will need to give way to the cost of restoring and rebuilding the lives of Aucklanders, and strengthening their communities.
The mayor has previously been neutral on climate change, allowing committed specific funding to continue, but not favouring the big step-up which previous budgets have said is needed.
Brown has now publicly stated he believes the flooding is connected to climate change, so how can his budget proceed without funding to match the words?
Councillors and local board members have been literally knee-deep in their communities, dealing with those whose lives have been devastated. How ready will they be to tell those communities that libraries may close for one day a week, some community facilities be closed or have reduced hours, that maintenance of public spaces may reduce?
Those communities hardest hit by the legacy of flooding may need more support, and better community amenities, to offset what they are dealing with in their own damaged homes.
The mayor’s own conduct through the floods, and his calls for his fellow elected members to let him be the one voice for citywide flood comment, may also reduce goodwill towards a budget until now, driven by meeting the mayor’s view of the right fiscal pathway through tough economic times.
‘‘The rebuild and the recovery, that’s where people are going to see the real me,’’ Brown told as he inspected recovery work at Orua Bay, where two people were seriously injured in a holiday home collapse.
It is an opportunity for the professional engineer to demonstrate his self-styled ‘‘Fixer’’ chops, but he will need to build both political and public consensus, a further steep learning curve just months into the job of being mayor of Auckland.