Once again, I find myself incandescent with rage as another round of fake and flawed consultation kicks off over Auckland’s Long-Term Plan 2024 to 2034.
We mere mortals are supposed to read, digest, analyse and respond to the 775 page document that is refreshed by an army of well remunerated council officers every three years.
As an unpaid community advocate, I can tell you this is an impossible ask and, without waiting for a response, Mayor Wayne Brown and his council cohorts want to sell off the rest of the airport shares, lease the port operation for 35 years and demolish the half built North Harbour Stadium to create an infrastructure 'Slush Fund' that will trickle away without trace.
In Wayne’s world, our rates are set to go up 8% this year, then 7% and surprise, surprise, drop to 3.5% in 2025 in time for the next local body election! Roll up, roll up the council-controlled circus is back in town. Our hope that Mayor Brown wasn’t just another red nose rodeo clown has evaporated.
His intentions to sell off the family silver removes each and every one of us from being shareholders in this large public business. Instead, we will become spectators to a three ring circus.
As an unpaid community advocate, I can tell you this is an impossible ask and, without waiting for a response, Mayor Wayne Brown and his council cohorts want to sell off the rest of the airport shares, lease the port operation for 35 years and demolish the half built North Harbour Stadium to create an infrastructure 'Slush Fund' that will trickle away without trace.
In Wayne’s world, our rates are set to go up 8% this year, then 7% and surprise, surprise, drop to 3.5% in 2025 in time for the next local body election! Roll up, roll up the council-controlled circus is back in town. Our hope that Mayor Brown wasn’t just another red nose rodeo clown has evaporated.
His intentions to sell off the family silver removes each and every one of us from being shareholders in this large public business. Instead, we will become spectators to a three ring circus.
The unicycling bear from Auckland Transport will peddle off with a billion dollars spilling from his battered leather suitcase, eager to spend it on more traffic-calming havoc in our streets.
The performing seal known as Eke Panuku loves to show off, balancing $100 million of our assets on the tip of his shiny nose while flapping his flipper at his developer mates who toss him a smelly sardine in return.
Watercare, the strong man in the show, will pretend to struggle with the weight of water responsibilities, meanwhile plotting to axe four and a half hectares of pristine regenerating native kauri bush in Titirangi in order to build a new filter station which would be better situated in Rosebank Road or industrial New Lynn.
The Tupuna Maunga Authority (TMA) and the defunct Urban Design Office will continue as side show attractions, waiting for funding approval to destroy our built and natural heritage with their ‘expert' advice.
Your elected councillors simply need to stop approving funding to end TMA’s intention to axe all exotic trees on every mountain in Tamaki Makaurau.
A funding freeze would stop this quango’s ethnic cleansing of trees and decolonising bird habitats until native species are planted and provide a new food source. Tickets to watch the denuding of exotic trees is a mere $1 million per maunga (mountain), with a citywide debt of $12.4 billion every million dollars saved helps.
Auckland Facilities, with stool, whip and treats is the Lion Tamer, continuing to maul our parks as contractors ring-bark trees from their ride-on mowers and spray glyphosate everywhere you and your family tread.
Yes, folks, the Supercity Circus is back in town with another long-term plan rolled out by malnourished, tight-rope walking penguins, having successfully transformed itself right under our noses from a family centric business to a huge corporate entity that values profit more than people.
With an insatiable appetite for more revenue, the high-wire acrobats in the accounts department will encourage you to 'Have Your Say' and then disregard your comments as they juggle numbers too unwieldy to hold on to.
The global procurement industry circus train (that Penny Bright warned us about) continues to distort the real cost of pipes, roads and rubbish with mind boggling figures that you and I are supposed to swallow with nary a query.
Without enormous public push back via email, the airwaves and social media, our collective interests will fall under the hammer to some slobbering auctioneer crying fire sale, fire sale!
After 27 years of writing submissions, signing petitions, running community campaigns and sitting through mind and bum numbing meetings, I can only hope that there is someone out there with a moral compass, an enlightened economic model and a compassionate heart that finds their way through the crowd of wannabes to become our next mayor, bringing with them at least a dozen loyal colleagues that can stop this 14-year-old supercity circus train in its overheating tracks. (LISA PRAGER)
Read all the details for yourself: www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/externalcontentdelivery/consultations/budgets/long-term-plan-2024-2034/ltp-2024-2034-consultation-document.pdf
Then have 'Your Say' place a bob each way: https://akhaveyoursay.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/hub-page/long-term-plan-2024-2034
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Published: March 2024