Today I had an opinion piece in the Herald that talks about how the new Auckland Super City can be a super crime fighter:

The first person to meet me in my new office on the day I became mayor of Manukau was not my deputy, or the council chief executive.

The new Auckland Council will have a lot of work to do to help create a safer environment – police statistics show that Auckland City has more reported crime per 100,000 residents than any other police district in the country, and Counties/Manukau the fourth highest rate.

You can read the whole opinion piece here.

Today the Manukau City Council voted to take up Auckland International Airport’s share offer. This purchase guarantees continued public ownership of a cornerstone stake in a key strategic asset. I’d like to explain why we did it.

I believe Auckland International Airport is a key asset for the region and the country.

The decision to take up the share offer means Manukau’s shareholding retains its existing share of the company, which is 10.013%.

This ensures that the Council’s shareholding remains over 10 percent, and therefore is unable to be bought out in the event of any takeover attempt. Failure to take up the offer would, in effect, be diluting the Council’s stake.

It was therefore important for our council to take up its shares to guarantee the continuation of a regional stake in such an important asset.

Other council’s have controversially privatised part or all of their shares. Manukau has kept its shareholding in the airport.

Our shareholding enables us to continue to have a say in the direction and development of the company. One only has to see the tremendous development at and around the airport over the past decade to understand how important its continued growth and vitality is to the local economy.

Also, on pure commercial grounds, it is the right decision. The company is a quality asset which returns good dividends.

Our council and the people of Manukau, along with people from right around the region, strongly support public ownership of key assets – like airport shares, water companies, and the port – in order to support the city’s future development.

I believe we need to grow our future, not sell it. Continued public ownership of key assets is crucial to building a world-class city.

With the new Supercity coming into existence, Manukau’s shareholding is an investment on behalf of ALL of Auckland.

(Manukau City Council will purchase 7,671,728 shares through the share offer at a cost of $12,658,321.20. Its current shareholding of 10.013% percent will remain the same.)

I’ve had many conversations with people about Auckland’s power supply following yesterday’s power cut.

I believe the new Auckland Council needs to investigate electricity generation options which will guarantee security of supply to businesses and homes in our region.

The fact is that relying on lines transmitting energy from generators hundreds and hundreds of miles away will always leave Auckland vulnerable to transmission cuts and system failures such as we saw yesterday.

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Local government democracy is about local people elected by local communities onto local boards doing their utmost to provide those communities with the best possible facilities, services, and infrastructure.

With the new Auckland structure, the region will have a new, strong council to determine and direct the strategic direction of the entire region. There will be one mayor and one council providing the vision and broad parameters for the city’s economic, social, environmental, and cultural development. Beneath that will be the local boards. It is these local boards who will be at the sharp end of providing facilities, services, and infrastructure in their local areas. And they should have a say in determining what those facilities, services, and infrastructure are.

At the moment, however, the roles and responsibilities of the community boards are yet to be determined. The third and final parliamentary bill needed to create Auckland’s new council structure came out in December. It finalises the shape of the new water company, and sets up the new transport agency and the council controlled organisations working beside the council. But the bill is missing one crucial thing – it does not clearly define what issues should remain under the control of the 19 local boards, not the city council.

Have a look at what roles and responsibilities I’ve been advocating the local boards should be involved in by reading this appendix to Manukau City Council’s submission on the second Auckland Council Bill. In it we specifically outline just want we thought the local boards should be involved in.

What the boards are involved in matters hugely because throughout the build-up to the new Auckland council, people from all over the region – from Albany to Avondale, from Favona to Freemans Bay, from Howick to Helensville – have said they are afraid of losing their community identity and their local representation.

They have said, loudly and repeatedly, that we’re proud of our city and region but we also want to maintain the strength we get from our diversity and local communities. So we’ve been asking for strong local boards with real power to make local decisions.

At the end of the second bill to the select committee, there was a lot of agreement across the region as to what the proposed powers and authorities of the local boards should be. We will submit these again to the government during the third bill’s consultation process.

What is it that we think the community boards should be charged with?

Firstly, they need to be involved in the planning and policy for their communities. Local boards should develop long term community plans and annual plans, as well as contributing to regional policy-making and giving effect to regional plans. They should then develop local policy within the regional framework in areas like, for example, dog control, gambling and gaming machines, licensing of cafes, bars and liquor outlets, brothels, and the development of town centres.

Local boards should be responsible for local decisions on local roads, footpaths, crime prevention (where CCTV cameras should be sited, for example), beautification schemes, building consents, animal control, environmental health, local parks, recreation and sports facilities, libraries and pools, community houses and advisory services, town centre promotion, galleries and museums, beaches, camping grounds, liquor licensing, and more.

A local board centred around Manukau, for example, could well want to continue projects such as Sir John Walker’s superb Field of Dreams initiative, which is encouraging the young into physical activity and sport. It might also want to continue the free entry to swimming pool policy. Subject to agreement with the Council, the board should be free to develop and implement these sorts of policies.

With respect to local service delivery, the local boards should be the budget holders and decision makers. That means that if the Devonport library has a particular project it wants to introduce, it should raise it with the Devonport board, and not have to front up to the full Auckland council.

The boards need to be supported by the Auckland Council through the provision of facilities and support from specialist local board staff with a range of skills and expertise. And they’ll need area offices that support multiple boards.

These powers and authorities would give teeth to local boards and ensure they could deliver local services. With the powers we suggested, the boards would also be strong enough to advocate for their communities to the Auckland council on policy and strategy.

But as it stands the third bill leaves it up to the new Auckland council to decide what is local enough to leave to the local boards. It will all depend on the desire of the new mayor and the new council to support different communities – and their willingness to share power with local boards. The new mayor might want to devolve roles to the boards, but the majority on the council could have a different agenda. Or vice versa.

The Government is missing an opportunity to save Auckland from more squabbling by not setting in legislation what is the responsibility of the new Auckland council and what it must leave to local boards.

But, as with all legislation, this has to go through a select committee, which will listen to public submissions, before it becomes law around May. If you have concerns, make sure your voice and your community are heard during that process.

And when we all vote for our new mayor and new councillors we need to ensure that we vote for people we trust to make the right decisions for all of Auckland – and for all the exciting, individual communities within it.

Today I called for all of Auckland’s communities to be allowed a say about what happens on Queens Wharf.

I believe the last thing we need to do is rush a decision on the future of Queens Wharf before the new super-city is established and we can deliver a coherent master plan for the development of the harbour.

The harbour and waterfront is too important to Auckland’s future to be held ransom to political agendas or a timetable around the Rugby World Cup. Nor do we need Wellington to be seen to be telling the region how it should develop.

Decisions about the waterfront will affect all of Auckland’s ratepayers, however I believe the communities outside of Auckland City feel like they have had no say in what is being decided, even though they’ll be asked to pay for whatever is proposed.

The problem is that the process so far has failed to engage wider Auckland. The government needs to engage with all the region’s councils and communities on plans for the waterfront.

As of November, every ratepayer in the Auckland region will have an equal stake in the plans. The government needs to convene a working group which involves communities from Rodney, North Shore, Waitakere, Auckland City, Manukau and Franklin to decide the best way forward.

The harbour needs to be developed in a way which brings all of Auckland together. The new Auckland Council will be in the best position to deliver a coordinated vision for the improvement of the waterfront, involving all Aucklanders who want to have a say on what they want to see on our wharfs. The process thus far hasn’t delivered that buy-in.

The construction of a beautiful mixed-use cruise ship terminal and public building on Queens Wharf has to be seen in the context of developing the Wynyard Quarter and Tank Farm, Te Wero bridge, the Marine Events Centre, North Wharf, the finger wharfs and the new harbour crossing.

Rushing into a decision will mean more ad-hoc development, game playing and political bickering.

Auckland has one of the world’s most beautiful harbours. Aucklanders deserve to see a coordinated long-term development plan for the waterfront we can all be proud of.