Rod Oram has an interesting piece in the SST on the Government’s plan to reduce costs and put in place lower, uniform regulatory fees across the region for building and resource consents, land information memorandums and dog registrations. He says the costs could be as low as 10% less than the lowest benchmark charged by current councils. This would undoubtedly be popular with Aucklanders. The cost of building and resource consents is one of the biggest gripes against local government, and not just in Auckland.
But my guess is Aucklanders will take some convincing. The Herald’s digipoll released Friday says 49.5% of Aucklanders do not believe the Government’s main selling point for its super city – that the amalgamation of the 8 councils would improve management of the region.
Oram seems to think the plan to reduce costs is smoke and mirrors anyway. He reports “operating costs for regulatory fees was $102 million across the eight councils in the latest financial year. Of that, fees covered $89m while ratepayers picked up the balance.” Under the new modelling the Government intends to recover $80 million in user fees, but has no accurate projection for operating costs. The likely outcome? A greater share of the bill will be picked up by the ratepayer. Oram says Hide must be hoping no one will notice until after the general election,
At the Herald on Sunday, Matt McCarten writes the Government’s mishandling of the super city reforms has catapulted Len Brown ahead in the mayoral race. Yesterday the Herald released the rest of its digipoll results: 58.8% opposed the Government’s imposition of CCOs on the Auckland Council (32.4 supported). 53.5% said the Government had not handled the reforms well. 32.3% said they had. Bernard Orsman and Geoff Cumming do a useful summary of the arguments on the CCOs and the lack of powers for local boards ahead of the third and final bill coming back to the House on May 24.
Watch the spin on costs. I believe that Wellington is seriously worried about the true total costs of the Supercity and will spin on this until a) ATA is long gone; b) the 2011 election is over; c) the new council can be blamed for the costs. Then, it will a question of making whatever is in place work.
Does this apply to water? In Waitakere we have by far the cheapest water in Auckland. If everyone paid our rates, I’m guessing that Watercare would struggle with cost recovery. Might be worth asking Rodney if cross-subsidisation by ratepayers (which is what it will be for dog control if they lower fees) will apply to water as well. My tip is that it won’t.
Nothing can be provided for less than cost price. This isn’t a truism but a basic fact. If it costs $102m to provide those services then it cost $102m and there’s little to nothing that can be done to decrease them. NACT saying that they will reduce them means shifting the costs from the businesses (developers) to the ratepayers which will, of course, push rates up. But, this is the government of business and they’re more than willing to have their profits boosted by the taxpayers.
What is the budget the ATA is required to stay within for its work on the transition project?
@ Robert Winter – I think you are right. The game is to push as many of the transition costs into post-November 11 so they can be blamed on the new Council. This is certainly happening with IT. When asked about the costs these days Hide always says “I don’t control them. It will be up to the new Council.”
@ TopCat – Water will be interesting. I am told there will be no change in the billing formulae until after mid-2011. After that there will be a rationalisation, and volumetric pricing for both water to the tap and wastewater across the region. It wouldnt surprise me if Waitakere took a hit. We did some analysis last year that showed that if you applied Auckland City’s pricing regime to Waitakere, an average family of four in the West would face a $700 a year increase in their water bills.
@ Verdant – ATA’s budget is $34 million but that is only part of the picture. See this post for more detail: http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2010/05/03/the-cost-of-the-super-city/
I saw Len Brown speak at an event in Takapuna a few weeks ago. I hadn’t met him before – but he was great. It is good to see a leader who is passionate about the city and understands people’s concerns about the process. He’ll get my vote.
The so called fee reduction is nonsense.
Consents cost money to process and are not an earner for local bodies. The leaky homes debacle has shown that not enough resouce was put into the consent process.
Sure big business and particularly developers would love lower costs. As it has been shown they do not carry the responsibility for failure of the consent process .
It sound like a sop to distract from other dirty work by NACT in the moves toward undemocratic legislative clobbering of our largest population base with further unwanted privatisation.
In some countries this would be called a Coupe and analysed as backed by systemic corruption.
And they are smiling all the way.
I am only posting this on this thread because sadly… [Iain - This is getting tedious. You are warned. If you continue to post your lengthy off-thread comments you will be banned. - Phil]
Substitute Ken Livingstone for Len Brown, Maggie Thatcher for Rodney Hide, and Super Auckland for the Greater London Council. You get the general idea of what could potentially happen.
Hmmm, interesting article but McCarten, I wish he wouldn’t refer to people as “right-wing elites” being elite is a good thing; Richie McCaw is an elite athelete, I want to be operated on by an elite surgeon… Right-wing crooks would be better…