Council officials paralyse city with analysis
These handholding talkfests have proven to be hopelessly ineffectual, merely kicking the can down the road.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a city, administered by a robust, nimble and responsive council?
A council that didn’t pussy-foot or prevaricate, but acted promptly, decisively and effectively. A council that placed a higher premium on safeguarding the rights of the wider public than pandering to the rights of miscreants. A council that was underpinned by a core belief in upholding the greater public interest.
Dreams are free, but a swag of topical trouble-spots lays bare the profound defects in the Christchurch City Council’s decision-making culture, overtly influenced by a profligate bureaucracy that opts for paralysis by analysis, rolling out an endless procession of staff reports from its treadmill.
To be fair, the Local Government Act does place some onerous obligations on our administrators, including an overdose of clunky consultation requirements – but that’s no excuse for the council’s default position which is one of inertia, indifference and ineptitude.
Just look at the complete farce that has consumed the street prostitution stand-off on Manchester St north.
For five years, residents have been pleading for the council to prohibit this unsavoury trade from polluting a residential neighbourhood. Initially, I too, had assumed a parliamentary amendment was required before councils could regulate the street sex trade.
But the evidence is overwhelming that there’s nothing stopping a local authority from flexing its muscles right now. Instead, successive councils have been brow-beaten by staff reports, recommending the touch-feely approach of forming inter-agency come togethers, to diffuse the troubles.
These hand-holding talkfests have proven to be hopelessly ineffectual, merely kicking the can down the road.
Only last week, another freshlyissued council staff report advised councillors to stick with the interagency approach, while warning that applying the public places bylaw to street prostitution could breach the Bill of Rights. Oh, please.
Meanwhile, the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective has inadvertently exposed how they no power of persuasion over the workers they purport to represent, warning that street prostitutes won’t comply with regulated trading areas, nor will they seek a licence. So we should just roll over to such fecklessness?
Thankfully the police have signalled that they’ll willingly enforce any such regulation. And political aspirant Duncan Webb has clearly swayed councillors to finally support the regulatory approach.
Despite being over-ruled by the councillors, council staff seem determined to play a slow game, advising they won’t be able to issue a report on how to regulate street prostitution until September. Add to that, a lengthy consultation process, and life in slow-mo relentlessly grinds on for Manchester St’s beleaguered residents.
It’s all very reminiscent of the council staff’s steadfast opposition to combating non-self-contained freedom camping in the city. Their complicit softly-softly approach to the vanpackers descended into an unmitigated debacle in the summer of 2015/16. The public backlash forced them to buckle to a far more vigorous enforcement approach.
Across town, the same toothless malarkey is playing out over Division St’s troubles. Riccarton Community Constable Aaron Thorn strongly advocates for the city council to pass an antiloitering bylaw to empower the police to disperse the assembly of wanna-be teen gangster yobs from menacing shoppers and retailers with their anti-social behaviour.
Constable Thorn has been working closely with the HalswellHornby-Riccarton Community Board in a bid to liberate the area, which has already seen two businesses close down. The community board instructed the council to investigate crafting such a bylaw, but once again, the Bill of Rights card has been played, with claims of potential violation. (Numerous councils, including Auckland, have incorporated antiloitering provisions into their Public Places Bylaw.)
On Friday, I spoke to Community Board member, Debbie Mora, who’s worked tirelessly on Division St’s turmoil. She’s deeply frustrated that the council’s bylaw sub-committee didn’t even bother inviting the board along to those discussions. Nor was Constable Thorn. So instead, the council is now mulling over whether a trespass notice can be served on a footpath.
I feel sorry for community boards. They are at the coal face of community concerns, but are toothless to act. Prior to the last election, Mayor Lianne Dalziel regularly trumpeted her plans to delegate unprecedented powers to community boards. Nothing has happened.
City Hall’s bureaucrats will fight like hell to block that, too.