Councils are the bane of our lives. We are over council-ed, we are overrated and we should be immeasurably grateful to the central government who are capping rates and reducing the number of these groups.
The deadline to submit your plan is this weekend.
As always there are a decent number who haven't been able to get there, or if they have it will be close to deadline.
Another part of the problem is of course we don’t care. Our participation rate via voting is a joke.
I noted ironically the other day Auckland Council set up a committee to work out why their turn out was only 28%. I could help them there – get rates down and produce fewer committees.
The only reason you can argue against amalgamation is you're power hungry.
There are 70+ councils in this country. A tiny island nation with a handful of people and we need, they argue, over 70 councils?
Tiny little operations with duplication of services all over the place, all with their own rules, regulations and staffing costs and all with their weird variation and interpretation of rules.
If ever there was a case for “less is more”, we have it. But no.
Like recalcitrant children they are holding out. I assume some of them because they hope Labour get back and let them get on with their orgy of waste and inefficiency.
When those who don’t submit rely on the so-called back-up plan, they will moan about that too.
The sad truth or outworking of this sort of behaviour is the revelation that these people are not really about us. They are not really about their community. They are about themselves.
They are power grabbers and control freaks. They love their insignificant little fiefdoms and love to laud their perceived power over others.
Come deadline and come the capping of the rates and the reduction of the council numbers, not to mention the water amalgamation, is there a single person outside those whose power is being disabled, that will actually miss what we currently have?
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
As always there are a decent number who haven't been able to get there, or if they have it will be close to deadline.
Another part of the problem is of course we don’t care. Our participation rate via voting is a joke.
I noted ironically the other day Auckland Council set up a committee to work out why their turn out was only 28%. I could help them there – get rates down and produce fewer committees.
The only reason you can argue against amalgamation is you're power hungry.
There are 70+ councils in this country. A tiny island nation with a handful of people and we need, they argue, over 70 councils?
Tiny little operations with duplication of services all over the place, all with their own rules, regulations and staffing costs and all with their weird variation and interpretation of rules.
If ever there was a case for “less is more”, we have it. But no.
Like recalcitrant children they are holding out. I assume some of them because they hope Labour get back and let them get on with their orgy of waste and inefficiency.
When those who don’t submit rely on the so-called back-up plan, they will moan about that too.
The sad truth or outworking of this sort of behaviour is the revelation that these people are not really about us. They are not really about their community. They are about themselves.
They are power grabbers and control freaks. They love their insignificant little fiefdoms and love to laud their perceived power over others.
Come deadline and come the capping of the rates and the reduction of the council numbers, not to mention the water amalgamation, is there a single person outside those whose power is being disabled, that will actually miss what we currently have?
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
5 comments:
Cmon Mike - the issue isn’t amalgamation the issue is that so many ratepayers in mildly successful council regions want to take on the dysfunctional operations of a neighbouring council.
Eg Wellington vs alll its neighbours!
Another example is most ratepayers remember the promise of Aucklands super city council and the promise of lower rates that absolutely has not materialised- the council just tripled in size.
Herein lies the issue.
Can you imagine paying your over bloated rates to the less indebted Kapiti council for years only to have to join up with Wokington who is so burdened by debt and gross leftie dysfunction as to be a literal horror show of a city.
Will Wokington then run Kapiti or will Kapiti run Wokington? Which devil is the lesser of two evils?
Amalgamation worked out well for Auckland. All those people gone after removing the duplicated services. Costs dropped dramatically because big is better. Oh wait, managers just built bigger empires, which justified them getting bigger salaries.
Maybe the government should do something about it's own bloated service before demanding others do it.
This is a bit harsh on those opposed to amalgamation in my opinion. There are lots of reasons why done are opposed or quite sceptical. There’s an assumption that bigger is better with more efficiencies etc but that isn’t necessarily the case. Some lower debt councils don’t want to assume others’ large debts, there’s a loss of local representation with a mega council, there’s the amalgamation costs and this tine it is being virtually forced upon councils. Last time this came up the greater Wellington mayors all rejected it (except higher debt and rates Porirua). This time there is little time to analyse the effects snd respond. If there was some clear evidence it would be beneficial, as opposed to what seems like an assumption, then there might be more support.
I know a small District Council which in previous decades successfully fought off a merger proposal.
They didn’t want it, nor did their few thousand ratepayers.
They were happy with the services they received and the management was lean and well-budgeted.
As an example, they didn’t send their rates bills to a mail house for processing. Instead, most of the office staff - management included - sat around the council table on a non-meeting day to collate, fold, insert and bundle the rates notices. Job done in an afternoon at no additional cost.
If they merged with neighbouring councils that task would be outsourced as part of “shared services”. So much for cost savings!
The obvious argument against amalgamation is that ratepayers in well-run, financially conservative councils end up subsidising ratepayers in councils which have racked up debt and deferred maintenance.
Maybe that is exactly the Government’s intention so they can allow the spendthrifts to borrow more!
Ratepayers should have got to vote on the amalgamation proposals at the next local body elections. And I mean Ratepayers not those over 18.
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