Surely we can do better than this

In 1764 James Otis, a firebrand lawyer, popularised the phrase ‘‘taxation without representation is tyranny’’ that rapidly morphed into the rallying cry of the American Revolution.

I was thinking of this watching the three-yearly ritual of the Long Term Plan.

While the community faces higher unemployment, lower wages, and rising housing costs, NPDC has taken a year to come up with a plan suggesting that a 16 per cent increase in rate burden on already stressed households and businesses is not only necessary, but desirable and popular.

That idea appears largely founded on their own beliefs made from the comfort of their own material circumstances as well as the aggressive lobbying of the entitled sections in the community urging them to be visionary.

Here is a newsflash – poor people don’t participate in selfselecting surveys, or make submissions. Nor do most ordinary citizens trying to make ends meet.

So who is representing their voice in this tax grab? You might expect councillors to be stepping up to fill this role, but other than one or two isolated voices there are few signs of understanding or empathy from our elected representatives.

Rather than acting as guardians of genuine public interest they continue to facilitate its undermining.

The problem with taxes like rates is that you have no choice but to pay whatever is demanded.

You can’t opt out of services you don’t want or need, and you can’t find a service provider that would provide these at a more competitive cost.

Nothing is out of bounds for what that money could be spent on. This is an open invitation for vested interests to lobby to receive public money to subsidise their private interests.

Unsurprisingly therefore, this has been the pattern in the district over the last two decades, and it continues in the proposed plan.

Since the 2002 local government reforms loosened the public purse strings, NPDC overall spending has grown twice as fast as general inflation with the portion taken by rates growing three-and-a-half times faster than population growth.

The benefits of this accelerated spending of other people’s money have gone disproportionally to council staff, elite ball sport enthusiasts, and the people who care about arts and culture. Not only was money spent on the leisure activities for the wellheeled, that money was also prioritised over maintaining core infrastructure.

Having woken up to this we have to pay for it all over again, plus the new wishlist.

It is widening inequality in action, as income is transferred from the bottom of the community to the top.

Despite being the fundamental purpose of local government, big picture community social or economic goals isn’t what steers the ship or excites the crew.

Instead every three years we are presented with an idiosyncratic wish list of facilities promoted by councillors and sections of the community that want others to help pay for their priorities.

Sports stadiums, sports hubs, art galleries, museums, decorative oversized airport terminals, or event promotion, all centred in New Plymouth.

The other phenomenal growth area for NPDC spending has been in staff remuneration.

In 2003 NPDC had 383 full-time equivalent staff. In 2020 this had risen by 50 per cent to 558. The annual wage and salary bill has almost doubled from $25 million to $47 million (today’s dollars), meaning some big pay rises in the middle and top of the organisation.

The chief executive now earns 13 times what the median wage earner in the district does, and whole departments have been created whose purpose seem more about serving the organisation than the public.

New Plymouth is now the 11th biggest territorial authority in the country as ranked by the remuneration authority (out of 61 included in this pool).

Ranking is based on the size of the council’s budget, asset base, population, and perversely, social deprivation. And size is what counts when it comes to the chief executive, managers, and councillor remuneration.

It’s not hard to find statistics on social and economic circumstances of people in the district, but you won’t find these under any assumptions that the council makes when it discusses affordability of rate increases or debt levels.

They seem oblivious to the fact that we have whole neighbourhoods that suffer similar levels of deprivation as areas of Northland, and the East Coast. Areas out of sight, but right on councillor and NPDC managers’ doorsteps.

So what of the next 10 years? Well, look no further than the capital project list. $60 million going to build and enhance big ticket leisure facilities versus less than $10 million to community development.

Meanwhile ‘‘paying it forward’’ is the new truth-speak for burdening the next generation with a $413 million debt liability. Let’s hope that interest rates never go up. Somebody once said this about local government: ‘‘It is neither’’.

Surely we can do better than this.

– Len Houwers was a New Plymouth District Councillor from 2013 to 2015.