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02 July 2006

A column published in the "Sunday Star-Times"

RATES GO STEROID

All over the country, local government is currently trying to explain why your rates demand has just gone steroid.

Double digit rises appear to be the norm –the Horizons regional council topping the national scale. They will inflict up to 55% rate rises upon their rural Wanganui ratepayers.

Auckland City is little better. Although their triennial rise of 34% may be the bastard child of the de facto Hubbard/Left relationship, the real reason is more complex. Besides, North Shore has worse problems – an anticipated rate rise of 150% over the next decade.

Almost to a council, local government is blaming the twin evils of past administration and present policy. Although there is a third factor. The Audit Office. Because local government is notoriously lackadaisical with its finances, the auditors have been brought in to ensure proper accounting procedures are being used.

For most councils, this is a novel concept. They’re used to fudging the numbers or simply ignoring infrastructural needs until they become a crisis. This year, they haven’t been allowed to and every resident of every council in this country will be grateful for that.

That gratitude though will be muted, compared with the reaction to your rates demand next month. Old ladies will faint, the excitable berate, and the rest of us shrug. Meanwhile, the Department of Statistics will try to convince us that inflation is only running at 3%. Not at your local council, it ain’t.

None of this is likely to make a front page anywhere. Even when councils run amok with their rates, there are always sexier things to lead the media. Only the very boring or the very strange tend to take much of an interest. In which respect, local government is like a Volkswagen. You just wish someone would steal it and set it alight, so that you could buy a decent car.

So why are councils and council affairs so stupefyingly irrelevant? When, deep down, we know that they’re not. Be it roads, rubbish, water, sewage, swimming pools or sportsgrounds – councils tend to control most of the amenities that we’ll ever use.

Increasingly they’re also into the arts too. That is because they are legally charged with being responsible for the “economic, environmental, social and cultural needs” of their community. So even where no culture exists – over vast tracts of the New Zealand hinterland – councils are required to create some.

Sadly, this has led to an explosion of creatives. Who, actually, aren’t. Modern art has had one appalling effect upon modern civilisation and that is, that most anyone can call themselves an artist.

Whether its collections of old shoes or reconstituted dunnies … the truly talentless demand to be taken seriously. When all they really need is a good therapist or a short course of anti-psychotics. Of course none of them ever make any money, so the State has come to the party with welfare benefits repackaged as creative grants.

Then there is the consultation process that all councils are required to undertake. On everything. From ten year plans to the colour designs of their commercial buildings. From selling disused buildings to increasing parking charges.

Unlike central government. Where the party that wins the election gets in and does everything it wants for three years. Much saner, much quicker and if you don’t like the end result, there’s always another election. Local government gets the worst of both worlds – you can’t do anything and there’s still another election. Where you get turfed out … because you’ve done nothing.

Indeed local government is heading the same way as hospital boards. The latter are a charade. They pretend that democratically elected locals can have influence, but it’s only on whether they’ll have chocolate or plain biscuits at their meetings. Otherwise, everything else is run from Wellington.

Then there is the remarkable inefficiency of local government. Want to know why greater Auckland is really in a mess? Look no further than the fact that there are five main bodies involved – Auckland City, North Shore City, Waitakere City, Manukau City and the Auckland Regional Council.

Wellington has a similar problem – beset by Wellington, Hutt, Upper Hutt and Porirua city councils plus an overarching regional council. Transmission Gully would be operational by now if there had been one unitary authority.

My own area isn’t much better. Wanganui has 43,00 citizens but our neighbouring councils of Ruapehu and Rangitikei have but 15,000 each. Not big enough to do much beyond their statutory requirements or attract and retain the staff required to do so.

Something like a quarter of all councils in this country have resident populations of less than 20,000 people. Ridiculous. Although not as ridiculous as the tier of regional councils – but that’s another story.

Each of these councils then has their own chief executive, their own senior management, their own hermetically sealed council headquarters, their own mayor/chairperson, their own councillors, community board members and the like. It is a recipe for needless duplication and over-management.

Indeed it is a recipe for a rates rise. And therein lies local government’s real problem. There are just too many of them and co-operation and co-existence are concepts observed only when convenient. Which is hardly ever, because there are parochial and individual interests to serve. First.

So take a good look at your rates demand next month. It is the end result of an inefficient sector long overdue for reform.

ENDS