But a quarter of that population live in rural areas with their own water tanks and septic systems, who rightly won’t be paying for services that they don’t have. This leaves the figure for a typical family of four in our towns and city at a crippling $125,000.
Can you afford that?
After two years on council, it has become clear that few councillors comprehend large numbers and I am the only person on Hamilton City Council with a property and engineering background, having designed and built entire subdivisions with roads and drains. This means the political wing of councils are functionally incompetent.
Relying on staff instead is the definition of madness: doing the same thing again and again while hoping for different results. We get rid of a few politicians every three years, but the staff remain. It is a case of the lunatics running the asylum. There is a horrifying lack of accountability. Worse than that, if private citizens criticise the council, they get targeted for harassment. I have notified the Waikato Times of two cases so far this year.
Meanwhile, around the corner from my home, Waipā District Council is digging up a new roundabout it finished two months ago to put in four raised crossings, despite the government telling councils not to do this. Not only is it yet another waste of money, it is a devious way of getting around consulting with the public. Had the crossings been included in the original design, the public would have opposed the roundabout. Now it is being done within separate budgets as minor works without consent from the people.
There are solutions. The way councils manage projects seems to be designed to make everything cost at least twice as much. In the case of Auckland’s $250,000 concrete steps and Wellington’s $500,000 bike rack, it can be a crazy 100 times the real cost.
There are engineering solutions, such as micro-treatment plants that greatly reduce the cost of treating sewage and can be located in each suburb. Unfortunately for Hamilton, the council has just finished spending an eye-watering sum on pumping sewage from one end of the city to the other so it can budget $500 million to expand the Pukete wastewater treatment plant.
I will be blunt. I am a successful businessman: I can afford to pay. You can’t. I can halve the cost, if I am allowed to. Most of you still couldn’t afford that and they won’t allow me to do it anyway.
Relying on staff instead is the definition of madness: doing the same thing again and again while hoping for different results. We get rid of a few politicians every three years, but the staff remain. It is a case of the lunatics running the asylum. There is a horrifying lack of accountability. Worse than that, if private citizens criticise the council, they get targeted for harassment. I have notified the Waikato Times of two cases so far this year.
Meanwhile, around the corner from my home, Waipā District Council is digging up a new roundabout it finished two months ago to put in four raised crossings, despite the government telling councils not to do this. Not only is it yet another waste of money, it is a devious way of getting around consulting with the public. Had the crossings been included in the original design, the public would have opposed the roundabout. Now it is being done within separate budgets as minor works without consent from the people.
There are solutions. The way councils manage projects seems to be designed to make everything cost at least twice as much. In the case of Auckland’s $250,000 concrete steps and Wellington’s $500,000 bike rack, it can be a crazy 100 times the real cost.
There are engineering solutions, such as micro-treatment plants that greatly reduce the cost of treating sewage and can be located in each suburb. Unfortunately for Hamilton, the council has just finished spending an eye-watering sum on pumping sewage from one end of the city to the other so it can budget $500 million to expand the Pukete wastewater treatment plant.
I will be blunt. I am a successful businessman: I can afford to pay. You can’t. I can halve the cost, if I am allowed to. Most of you still couldn’t afford that and they won’t allow me to do it anyway.
When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.
George Martin.
It is up to the people to take back control of the councils or pay the price.
Andrew Bydder is a is a Hamilton City Councillor, a professional problem solver, a designer, and a small business owner. This article was first published HERE
3 comments:
Key sentence: the political wings of the council are functionally incompetent.
Oliver Hartwich from the NZ Initiative said Germany solved this kind of problem with councils by electing CEO mayors who had the power to do what they wanted without being bogged down by councillors or staff. They were directly accountable to the voters. It was a great success.
Councils are dominated by those opposed to the current government and are proceeding as far as possible as if the govt never changed. Essentially we have a local govt coup v central govt, with many (most?) civil servants (see themselves as superior officials with ''better'' knowledge and values) on board with the councils. In New Plymouth, for example, we have a 12-0 vote against the treaty bill and one abstention . No way does it reflect the electorate at central govt level. It is the same with creating appointed mixed race (aka Maori) seats with voting powers in order to nullify the referendum on Maori wards....you do not want wards, ok we will have them appointed instead. How local govt ended up almost 100pc in control of the Labour-Green-TPM supporters is not as perplexing as it seems. Turnout is low, many voters do not bother including renters, perhaps, as ''it does not affect me''. Those elected seem to have strong supporters bases in, for example the arts, or sport, or other sectors, school, education etc. They get voted for based on local connections and their national politics is not to the fore (except major centres). If we had local body elections tomorrow my gut feeling is the vast majority of the anti-current govt incumbents would be re elected. How do others see it. Views welcome.
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