Letter to the Editors: AT excesses and corporate Auckland

Again I feel compelled to remark on the failures of AT in the area I live along with our single issue representative on the council, Pippa Coom.

Since the imposition of the Super City in Auckland in 2008, I would like to remind my neighbours that the National Party pre-election platform stated the policy of the incoming Key government was to hold a referenda in Auckland regarding the corporatization of Auckland or the imposition of the Super City. Which everyone knows didn't happen.

Since this time I have followed the direction the council and the 20 corporations with ever growing trepidation at the waste of rates in funding companies that have quite frankly failed to provide the necessary services our community needs. The simplest way to invite change at this level is to vote in change. And I encourage people to vote.

At the last local body elections the president of our local board, Pippa Coom, chose to kick Westmere into touch by giving us to Mt Albert and I paraphrase, the strong community response with over 1000 submissions put paid to that. At the same election Pippa Coom proposed our local board need not take up its democratically allowed tenth member and possible tie breaker at votes to save $36k. I stated at the time our board was letting our rights slide.

We now know that the Water Care CEO was happy to let 50 million litres of water leak from our reticulation system per day during a drought when Aucklanders were asked to save 40 million litres a day. This lost water had been treated and cost money. He was forced to resign from his $900,000 plus job. Changes at a national level have now been laid out and put into place to save our water.

Corruption with roading contractors has reared its ugly head again at Auckland Transport, with a spate of recent convictions and coupled with the announcement that AT is, and I paraphrase, broke and needs money.

These are massive failures of the two largest companies holding our $30 billion plus public asset pool.

But our local councillor presses on regardless with her folly. Work will still begin on the roads in our neighbourhood in 2022 with the start of another round of bike tracks in our community that don't even connect to commuter infrastructure. The contentious parking review is under way, trying to cash in on the success achieved with the general acceptance of the speed limit restrictions on many streets. We can all witness the failure of the integration of bike tracks by wandering to West Lynn to check out the second set of remedial work to the original failed design of 250 metres of one track.

I bought these issues up at the last election and will do so every election cycle. Instead of laying fixes on fixes on fixes, shouldn't we look at starting again. The same can be said about the council. Voting for someone to continue this decline is, as Einstein put it, just doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

So in this year's local body election we need to vote in positive Aucklanders instead of the constant stream of self-selected politicians more interested in preserving their own platforms than improving the lot of all their constituents.

Please make an informative vote this election.
Adam Baines, Westmere

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