One city for Auckland

The Herald has an exclusive, that is great great news if true:

The whole Auckland region will be governed by a new super city council from next year.

It will be headed by a single mayor with executive powers to make independent decisions.

This is excellent, not just the removing of the huge number of individual local authorities, but the fact they have gone with an Executive Mayor. This will actually increase accountability to ratepayers because they will be able to elect and sack a Mayor who can make things happen – not just one vote amongst 20.

It is a bit like parliamentary politics – we have an executive Prime Minister who can govern, and we affectively have a referenedum on whether to keep or sack that PM.

The super city will stretch 140km from Pukekohe in the south to Wellsford in the north.

With 1.4 million people, it will be the largest city under one council in Australasia.

And may provide an incentive for the nine greater Wellington councils to do the same.

It is not known what the commission has in mind for the region’s four city councils, three district councils, one regional council and community boards.

One option is to abolish the existing councils for smaller “community councils” with elected leaders.

There does need to be a tier between the ratepayers and the overall Council and to my mind that should be small community boards – but with enhanced powers of decision making over local issues.

In another bold move, the commission will almost certainly recommend the mayor and new council become more involved in the social needs of the region, such as affordable housing.

I’m not quite so enthused on this aspect. I think Council can play a key role through zoning, land use, consenting etc in helping affordable housing. However I don’t think this should mean Council has to provide such housing.

But overall, if the Herald is correct, the Commissioners are steering in very much the right direction.