Rates consultation – Let Council know where you stand
I mentioned in my last report that Council would be running a public consultation on a proposed 2.5% or 3.5% rates increase. The Council’s Emergency Budget consultation document is out now. It is certainly grim reading. It does outline some very useful information as to the full situation and likely impacts of the two proposed options. I hope you take the time to provide your feedback on this important consultation – 3,500 people did so in the first 4 days.
It only takes a couple of minutes to fill out the four-question survey (three are multi-choice!). As part of your feedback – please let Council know that the Glenvar/East Coast Roads realignment project can not be deferred (see below).
#GreenLightGlenvar – Tell Council that Glenvar Road realignment project MUST NOT be deferred!
In the supporting information for the Emergency Budget (pg 26), Auckland Transport’s capital programme is reduced to $700 million (under a 3.5% rates increase scenario). With the proposed reduction in capital investment, they are proposing to cut and pause some work – including deferring the Glenvar/ East Coast Roads realignment project.
This is NOT a project that can be deferred any longer. The state of Glenvar Road and its extremely dangerous intersection has been a major safety issue for 30 years. This is NOT a ‘nice to have’ project that can be put off, but rather a significant and very dangerous safety issue for all road users in the area. We can not wait several more years. Someone will be killed as a consequence of inaction.
Once again our local MP Erica Stanford will be championing this project, with Julia Parfitt, Gary Holmes and myself from the Local Board. Our community fought and won for this project to be on AT’s books before, and we will do it again together. I will let you know our plan and share the details ASAP. In the meantime, please respond to the Emergency Budget consultation now and let Council know this project MUST go ahead. There are four questions to the consultation feedback – please let them know your thoughts about the Glenvar Road project in the fourth question open text box.
Please share my FB post about this matter and get everyone you can to respond to the consultation #GreenLightGlenvar! For more information and text that you can copy and paste visit www.greenlightglenvar.co.nz. Here is text that you can copy and paste into question four of the consultation document if you wish:
Our community is calling on Auckland Council to re-prioritise the Glenvar Road project and commence work in 2021 as originally promised. The Glenvar Rd realignment project is an essential safety project to upgrade the most dangerous roads in the East Coast Bays. The upgrade and realignment of Glenvar Road has been due for decades. In recent years, the development at Long Bay has put a great deal of pressure on the road and made it even more dangerous. There are stories from hundreds of motorists, cyclists, pedestrians and residents about accidents, near misses and traffic chaos. This upgrade has never been a nice-to-have. It is an essential safety upgrade that has been put off for decades. Glenvar is NOT a project that can be deferred. This is an essential infrastructure project and an essential safety upgrade. We have waited decades for this and we can not wait any longer.
May Business meeting
The Hibiscus and Bays Local Board has a business meeting once a month – usually held in either Orewa or Browns Bay. We’re still holding these as Skype meetings for now, but the good thing is that the May meeting was recorded. Not all the items came up chronologically, so I’ve included the minute mark at which each item came up if you want to listen to a particular section to hear how the discussion went.
The real hot issues were the Notices of Motion (NOM), I’d highly recommend listening to those and the discussion and points raised around them.
You can see the full minutes here. The items for decision-making to highlight were:
8.1 Deputation: Sir Peter Blake Marine Education and Recreation Centre 00:06:00
Deputation received and Yuin Khai Foong thanked. We also requested that our strategic brokers work with urgency with MERC and report back to us.
8.2 Deputation: Orewa Basketball Courts 00:11:45
Deputation received and Caitlin Watson and Sam Mills were thanked. We also requested that we receive an update on the Orewa Basketball Court and where the project sits within the Community Facilities renewal programme.
10.1 Notice of Motion: Member L Willis – Open Workshops for Hibiscus and Bays Local Board 03:43:00
Motion carried – 7 votes in favour, 1 against. Before the motion went to vote, an alternative amended motion was proposed by Julia Parfitt to hold two business meetings a month instead of 1 business meeting and 1 workshop. The benefit is that they are all public and two business meetings a month means as a Board we can be nimbler. This was lost – 4 votes in favour, 4 against (in these situations the Chair makes a casting vote, which he did against the motion).
10.2 Notice of Motion: Deputy Chairperson V Short – Rates Review 04:33:00
Motion lost – 6 votes against, 2 in favour.
11 Endorsing Business Improvement District (BID) targeted rates for 2020/21 00:31:00
Motion carried.
12 Proposed land exchange: Sidmouth Reserve 00:37:00
Motion carried. To exchange part of Sidmouth Reserve for part of 10 Sidmouth Street, owned by Watercare, to enable the upgrade of a critical wastewater asset).
13 Hibiscus and Bays Facilities Grant 2019/20 00:55:00
Motion carried. $163,000 was allocated.
14 Hibiscus and Bays Local Grants Round Two and Multiboard Grants Round Two 2019/20 grant allocations 01:47:00 and 03:18:00
Motion carried. $92,311 was allocated in the Local Grants round and $23,267 was allocated for multiboard grants.
15 Approval for Private Road Name for Subdivision at 144 Vaughans Road, Long Bay 00:49:00
Motion carried. The new road name is Ridgelea Road. I consulted with the Long Bay Residents’ Association and Okura community of which the majority supported this option.
16 Auckland Transport Update to the Hibiscus and Bays Local Board May 2020 00:51:30
Update received, motion carried.
17 Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency Innovating Streets for People pilot fund 00:53:00
Motion carried (we supported the submission of the Inverness Road Activation which is the creation of an urban village shared space project, and if confirmed we would contribute 10% of the funding).
18 Renewal of community lease to Sir Peter Blake Marine Education and Recreation Trust Board and Long Bay Beach Road Reserve 00:36:00
Motion carried.
19 Urgent Decision – New road name in the Treasure Plus Limited subdivision at 406 Hibiscus Coast Highway, Orewa 03:40:00
Motion carried (we noted that an urgent decision was made and approved under delegation by the Chair and Deputy Chair. The decision was to approve the name ‘Ngaru Way’).
Notices of Motion
What is a NOM?
Items can come before the Local Board in a few ways. One way is that a Member may give notice of a motion (NOM) they propose to move at a meeting. The mover must sign the notice, stating at which meeting they want it to be considered. It must be seconded by another member. Then that notice must be delivered to the chief executive of Auckland Council at least five working days before the meeting.
Usually, NOM’s are reserved for urgent matters but unfortunately, sometimes they can be used by members for ulterior motives or not in the spirit of collegiality. Both NOMs were ‘out of the blue’ and the movers, unfortunately, didn’t give all the members a heads up before or after they were lodged. Edit: I have been told that the open workshops NOM was alerted to our Chair, but this did not filter to the Board as a whole.
NOM – open workshops
As a result of a NOM, our Local Board workshops are now public. This is a great move and our Local Board is now leading the charge as one of the two Local Boards to do so (there are 21 in total).
Under legislation, workshops are not ‘official’ decision-making meetings so they are not subject to the same legal requirements of our Business Meetings. Our workshops are usually 4 to 5-hour meetings every other week where we have Council staff come and present on a range of matters such as key projects. These are quite useful meetings to discuss and debate matters before matters come to a business meeting.
Now that these will be open to the public, some of the items will be of a confidential matter, or at an early stage – so staff will give guidance to our Chairman who will make the call each time on what items will need to be discussed in a confidential part of workshops. I’ll keep you updated with information on the recordings of these workshops and how you can attend them in person.
Before we went to vote on this NOM, a proposed amendment was raised by Julia Parfitt to essentially get rid of workshops altogether and turn them into Business meetings. That way we would have two business meetings a month. The benefit being that we could be far nimbler in decision-making. I preferred this option, but the vote was split and it was voted down by our Chair using his casting vote. You can start watching/listening to this NOM from 03:43:00.
I spoke quite strongly about this NOM – I was saddened about the way it had come about with no discussion as a Board together. The issue of public participation and transparency of our Board is a much broader problem and policy question that needs to be answered. Don’t be fooled. Simply opening up workshops doesn’t address the problem at all. This is essentially a populist move (that I voted for in the end!) to appear more ‘open and transparent’ but does very little to actually address these bigger, more fundamental problems. No members of the public have ever come to our public business meetings in Orewa, and only one diligent Browns Bay couple sometimes come to our Browns Bay business meetings.
NOM – rates
The other NOM had 6 out of 8 people turn it down. Put simply – Local Boards do not set general rates and levies. Aside from that, at the time of the NOM, we also did not have the full extent of information of Council’s economic situation and what the resulting impacts would be so it wasn’t even a matter we could even discuss with good information at hand. COVID-19 have left many in our community without employment, or their incomes reduced. It is and will continue to be a very stressful time for so many. I am glad that Council immediately offered rates postponements to people suffering as a result of COVID-19 and I’m also pleased to see the consultation proposing more support. It is a challenging situation and always ends up with the broader concern that our community seems to have an inherent lack of distrust in the Council’s spending and priorities.
No one wins out of Council’s Emergency Budget – Council doesn’t; those employed by Council or the workers contracted to complete projects don’t; Local Boards don’t; and we as ratepayers don’t – especially those facing hard times right now. Important projects will be deferred and bigger and necessary infrastructure won’t see the light of day for years and years (here’s looking at our dire water shortage and wastewater infrastructure problems).
My (and others') responses to this NOM says it all really. Start watching/listening from 04:33:00 – it’s a very interesting one to listen to.
Grants for local community groups and organisations
Our May Board meeting took 5.5 hours (2.5 hours overtime) largely due to the length of time and deliberations over allocating grant budgets. There were three different types we looked at – Facilities Grants, and Local Grants. Local Grants also include Multi-Board Grants, where applicants seek funding from more than one Local Board. You can imagine, given the current climate, how many groups in our community were seeking various types of support. I lobbied hard for a fairer deal for very worthy Bays groups where funding was suggested as a lower or nil amount (e.g. Friends of Okura Bush and the Mairangi Bay Tennis Club).
The process for deliberating and decision-making on each application is quite poor and I have serious concerns about how fairly applications are treated. I’ve outlined these issues in detail to our Local Board staff and have made some recommendations on how the process can be improved – one major suggestion is actually based on some very loose tools that I used as a Policy Analyst at Pharmac. I’m committed to ensuring a fairer process and fairer treatment for our community groups and organisations.
In brief
301 Beach Road, Campbells Bay: Auckland Transport is proposing to upgrade the pedestrian crossing to a Swedish-style raised zebra crossing. This crossing will be raised to a platform level with the footpath and is expected to improve safety by slowing high traffic speeds on the approach to the crossing. A Swedish table has only one sharp ramp and a gentler exit which gives a smoother ride for vehicles and passengers. Have your say by 17 June.
On behalf of our Board, I’ve raised my hand again to complete a little piece of work – investigating the statement of proposal on the proposed amendments to the Alcohol Control Bylaw (2014). The feedback will be a short bullet point list that will highlight the local concerns for our community. If you have any comments on this Bylaw at all, please get in touch with me ASAP – alexis.poppelbaum@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz
Earlier this month I visited some homeowners on Glenvar Road who share a driveway. They had some concerns regarding a new retaining wall put up by a developer alongside their driveway. We discussed some of the issues, with a Council staff member present. It’s always helpful to visit and speak to people on-site so I always make the effort to do so. You’re welcome to get in touch with me over any Council-related concerns you have. The owners also noted some safety concerns regarding Glenvar Road, so I’ve booked in Auckland Transport’s traffic engineers to visit their address and undertake a survey.
Make Browns Bay Great Again! At the end of May I organised a walk-over around Browns Bay township with senior Auckland Transport staff, a representative from Auckland Council Community Facilities and the Browns Bay Business Association Manager Kim Murdoch. We discussed and looked over areas of concern in the cleanliness and upkeep of the town (gardens, rubbish bins, street furniture, paving, lighting etc). Some of these things (such as street furniture) are the responsibility of AT and others (e.g. planting and cleaning) are Auckland Council. There are some action points coming out of this and i’ll update you with more when I can – there are some great ideas to progress to ‘Make Browns Bay Great Again’ #MBBA
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