One City, No Tree
While I do admit I’ve been rather lax lately about certain aspects of whats going on at the moment, the One City debate has been of interest to me.
For those that don’t know, what most people call Auckland is actually made up of 4 different cities. Auckland City, Manukau City, Waitakere City and North Shore City. There are some outlying districts that make up part of the Auckland Region, but also have their own council districts as well.
The call is quite simple. Too many Chiefs in the area. Dump the extra city leadership and consolidate all the cities into one big city district. This isn’t really such a bad idea when you consider that “Auckland” is only around one and a half million people, even if the land area is one of the larger cities in the world.
Personally I like the idea of consolidating under a single governing body for the whole region. At the moment we pay rates to the Auckland Regional Council *and* the city council for the region we live in. It would be good to just consolidate that for starters?
Oh, and before anyone brings up that I don’t own a home or property, I still have to pay my share through my rent and so on. :-P
What I do not like about this plan is that the 4 big city councils seem to be deliberately excluding the other districts. Even worse, they have not included Auckland Regional Council. Sorry, but I do believe that to be rather important.
On the flipside, I hear a rumor that Palmerston North has DSL access. I figure the most boring town in the world must be cheaper to live in than Auckland, and all I need is net access to keep me entertained. ;-)
Auckland’s four big-city mayors have drawn up a secret plan to reduce the number of councils in the region before the 2011 Rugby World Cup and intend presenting it to the Prime Minister on Thursday.
Manukau Mayor Sir Barry Curtis yesterday confirmed that he and Auckland City’s Dick Hubbard, Waitakere’s Bob Harvey and North Shore’s George Woods had been working on a new governance structure for the region.
He declined to give details and the other three were even less forthcoming about the plan, which was developed secretly with no input from the Auckland Regional Council and the smaller district councils – Franklin, Papakura and Rodney.
Funny though isn’t it? We might finally get one city in Auckland, but they still can’t plant a damn tree on The Hill!!!
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