Unitary Council - a Step in the Right Direction?

So the Local Government Commission has decided that the whole of Northland should be one, vast, unitary Council, merging a City, a District and a Region.

I guess it is good to see that the new political leaders of these organisations have already met and say they are willing to work together for the best good of all — whatever that pious generalisation means. And I am pleased to see that the proposal goes some way towards what I consider to be the ideal two-step solution.

With a mixture of modesty and superiority, I suggest again -

1. Merge the sectional interests of all our little country’s Councils and Boards into a single organisation which could take over their roles. Actually, it’s already in place. It’s called the NZ Government. And it, for a country of our size, could do everything our complex system of Councils and Boards does.

2. Return local government to the locals. Reinvent elected voluntary community bodies that represent defined communities with common interests or common boundaries. The present system of wards can link up to seven or eight distinct communities, and consistently creates accusations of sectional interests. By definition, it is not “community”.

The Paihia Community Trust is a model for this view of local government. There may be as many as thirty defined communities under the new Unitary Council. I wonder if it will have thirty or more Community Boards?

Well done, Paihia!

Last night we joined several hundred locals for the twilight opening of the new park: Horotutu - “Our place”. There was free food, the shortest of annual meetings for the Community Trust and then there were thanks to all involved

As one who laboured for years on the Paihia Planning Committee to get the District Council to take our little community seriously, I found it absolutely stunning to see what has been achieved. The Council has obviously come to the party, instituting a special rates levy of $9 or so per household for local amenities and services. After several public consultations and submissions to many official bodies, the small maritime car park was cleared to be turned into a people space.

Then the voluntary work began. Commercial firms donated goods or gave big discounts for supplies. Contractors loaned machinery and allocated staff resources. Teams of volunteers worked separately to construct half a dozen separate features. Several individuals gave three months of full-time work every day, many of them discovering skills they did not know they had. One group provided meals for the workers every day for the whole three months.

The result is a beautiful green space incorporating the existing trees, augmented with special seating and the various features dreamed up by the “placemakers”. The cost has been in excess of $150,000 a large part of which was expended in feature lighting that changes colour every few seconds. A psychedelic piano, a huge illuminated model of the Bay of Islands, a stunning water and light feature and a telephone box library of books for free exchange. Other placemaking projects are invited and will be incorporated into this outstanding new amenity for the town.

Our Council representatives used to berate us because, they said, Paihia people could never agree about what they wanted. And it’s true that a few are still bemoaning the loss of 26 car spaces on the waterfront. But already small communities in this country and overseas are hearing what can be achieved when local people take some responsibility for their environment and try to do something about it. Well done, I say.

Isn’t this something like Local Shared Ministry? Small churches don’t have to wait for the national church to do it all for them. They have the resources, they have the people; all they need is the will and the commitment. And with some help from officialdom, great results can be achieved.

Go Waiheke!

I have just heard on the news that the commission on Auckland "Super City" will be listening to the locals at Waiheke Island today.

The news item said that what Waiheke people want is their own local Board with its own Budget. I hope they make the case confidently and with a lot of persuasion. They are asking for the right thing.

Local communities, especially those as distinctive as Waiheke or Paihia, ought to have more say in their affairs. And the ultimate responsibility is money. Local Boards with local budgets.

Go for it, Waiheke!

“Topsy Town?”

Paihia, like Topsy, just “growed”. With no proper town plan to guide its layout or infrastructure, the little town just kind of happened. When the place was a beach, a motel, two stores and a few dozen houses that didn’t matter much but by the booming mid-1980s, a coherent plan was really needed. Two decades later, we still don’t have one.
Now a major community workshop on 17th June is going to be invited to do some dreaming and put in place a planning process in which the community can develop its own considered vision for the future. Over the next three months there’ll be focus groups that will canvass opinion and shape up policy around major areas. Then there’ll be a couple more large community gatherings to review and finalise our vision for Paihia.
This considered statement of the community’s view will be presented to the Council in early 2010. We will have done by ourselves what successive Councils have so far failed to do for us. And it’s going to be fun.

www.paihianz.co.nz/community

focusonpaihia@xtra.co.nz