Posts by Roger
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...we'd get a pointless celebrity overseeing an incredibly complex transition of governance and operational capability and SuperAuckland would be wrecked from the start.
I think that there is a high probability of that. The race (and the ticket of councillors that you would need to actually make the Mayoralty worth having) is likley to be a money game or the possibility for a TV celeb.
Remember that the Mayor only gets one vote in the model, and if he or she wants to get the budget approved, then they will need a workable majority on the 20 person Council. That means that any Mayoral candidate will have to have a strong ticket for the 8 at large seats and then carry the ward seats from their 'home' area (unless they have national celeb staus).
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Sacha...
NZ Herald 13/04/09
Mr Hide said the mayors would be able influence the detail of the Government's plans before legislation went to Parliament, but no change would be made to plans for one council, one mayor and 20 to 30 local boards.
NZ Herald 11/04/09
"Aucklanders can be assured that the main decisions announced this week are Government policy, and are expected to be included in the legislation passed by Parliament," he [Hide] said.
They seem to be making such categoric statements that there would be too much political loss of face to retreat, or to return to ther recomendations of the Royal Commission. So it does seem that we are stuck with this regardless of what people think... unless it actually proves impossible to implement.
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Yes Sacha, but I doubt that it will make any difference with Hide saying that the desision is now government policy and while he is happy to talk nothing will change.
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Rod Oram on the Super City (SST)
To understand how bad the government's decisions on Auckland's governance are, you need to understand how comprehensively they destroy the proposals made by the Royal Commission.
Well at least someone in the media is paying attention and actually reading the reports!
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... Mayor of North Shore...
Craig... that is a very unkind thing to say about the leader of your community!
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That Jackie was Hyde's argument... 'three Maori councillors would be tokenistic, so let's have none, but we may allow them to have a little advisory committee that we can ignore'.
In my view we have a national governance structure that is based on biculturalism flowing from the treaty (in the absence of a constitution), but we have an increasingly multicultural community. This is a dichotomy that seems to be perfectly appropriate and acceptable. The suggested Maori positions had nothing to do with race and everything to do with governance and guardianship. Those members would undoubtedly have struggled in the decision making processes, but at least their voices and concerns would be heard at the top table.
And yes... the ARC is abolished along with all of the rest.
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"community councils" - were proposed ... They wouldn't have regulatory powers, employ staff, or govern local authority organisations.
Oh! So completely impotent then?
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James...
Well actually that was easy! Toronto has a Mayor (elected at large) and 44 councillors (from 44 wards) for a population of 2.5 million or 1:55,600
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Roger: how do the representation stats (1:70K) compare to some of those other places to which Auckland's been compared, e.g. Toronto?
James... I don't have North American numbers. A year or so I got interested and tracked down the Australian numbers so I had those at hand, but it is often actually quite difficult to get them.
One I do know is Edinburgh that had about 450,000 people and 50 councillors. However that is a different system... they run a cabinet portfolio system for the Council.
In the US they can often have quite small 'councils' but in many cases all of the senior managers may be political appointees so they get a sort of representation in a different way. Anyone know how US local government works??
I do remember reading that even including the NYC and LAs into the mix, the average size of a council is of the order of 20,000 people which equates to Waitaki District Council. In New Zealand the average council size is 58,000 (median = 34,000) which makes our Councils very large by world standards.
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James...
Like I have said I find the continual parroting that our councils are small and fragmented, and argument that so clearly flies in the face of all the facts, really depressing. As I said yesterday Melbourne has 29 odd councils and a State government and they seem to do just fine.