Auckland Rates

The NZ Herald in today’s editorial absolutely lashes Mayors Hubbard, Curtis and Wood for their posturing over rate rises.

Key extracts:

– That the article continues in this silly vein … tells us more than they intend about the calibre of our civic leaders.

– If this is so, the weakness of Auckland’s local government leadership is worse than we feared.

– If rate increases are needed to maintain ordinary council operations, our elected representatives are letting us down

– Political representation is the only means we have of putting local bodies under the sort of financial discipline that competition exerts on private firms

The Herald gets it dead right with their summary:

There is no excuse for any organisation to need revenue increases of 8 to 10 per cent a year, every year. Many an operation in the private sector manages to increase the volume and quality of its output by using its existing resources more efficiently. Councils never seem to produce productivity improvements because they are under no apparent pressure to do so.