Housing and parking spark debate
The day before voting papers start landing in Porirua voters’ letterboxes, three of the four candidates who want to lead the city for the next three years made last-minute pitches to an audience at Whitireia on Thursday evening.
Incumbent mayor Anita Baker, systems analyst Nicole Foss and Windley School teacher Ura Wilson-Pokoati attended the event hosted by the Porirua Chamber of Commerce and moderated by its chairperson, Hamish Mexted.
Beauty salon owner Tapu Elia did not take part.
The trio didn’t make many promises when asked about issues such as how to support small businesses, the future of paid parking in the city centre and their stance on water fluoridation, but they did offer different positions.
In the debate, Baker said she would like to stay for another three years because she thought the council was ‘‘doing a good job’’ and if re-elected, she would focus on infrastructure, including looking to have a policy to penalise ratepayers for underutilising properties.
‘‘I would like to get new buildings, but we have people sitting on [current] buildings and don’t do anything to them.’’
Baker also leaned towards resuming paid parking in the city centre once its suspension lifts in March, saying it could help stave off future rates increases because the city doesn’t have income other than from ratepayers. She said the council could review it after one year.
However, Foss and WilsonPokoati disagreed, with the latter saying she thought it ‘‘stinks’’ and thought the community could do better.
Foss claimed ‘‘recessionary times are coming’’ and the city should ‘‘be careful’’ of building a lot of houses now the ‘‘housing bubble is now bursting’’ and a lot of people were ‘‘going to find themselves in negative equity pretty soon’’.
Her main priority for the city, Foss said, was ensuring community resilience and preventing the council from ‘‘extending credit and debt’’.
She also said the council’s budget is ‘‘bloated’’. She committed to prioritising infrastructure instead of what she called vanity projects, but was against ‘‘forced amalgamation’’ and water fluoridation, claiming it had no health benefits despite established science.
‘‘Preserving a local voice is really important,’’ she said. ‘‘Areas that are of different parts of a [larger] area don’t necessarily have the same concerns.’’
Wilson-Pokoati wanted more co-governance and interaction with mana whenua when the next city council made decisions.
‘‘We should have cogovernance here to answer some of the questions which are going to have impact on you,’’ she said. ‘‘It means an acceptance of talking in conversations at this particular time.’’
Along with Baker, WilsonPokoati supports having water fluoridation because the issue was ‘‘close to her heart’’ as she grew up frequenting the dental clinic in Wellington.
‘‘We need to do something about dental health because if your teeth aren’t healthy, how could you eat?’’
The first thing she will do as mayor, Wilson-Pokoati also said, was getting to know about her team and revisiting existing rates.