Albert-Eden Local Board (Owairaka Subdivision):

Albert-Eden Local Board (Owairaka subdivision)

Albert-Eden Local Board 

RATINGS GUIDE:

$ to $$$$$ with $ being a leftist trougher and $$$$$ being small government dynamo

For some however, a clown is more appropriate. More than one may be awarded.

I note that the candidate profiles on voteauckland.co.nz now have some questions included:

• Why are you standing for this position?
• What do you love most about the area you are seeking to represent?
• What will be your priorities if you are elected?

In the interests of fairness, I’ll be linking each candidate profile to their name and affiliation.

Owairaka Subdivision

There are 10 candidates for this 4 seat subdivision of the Albert-Eden Local Board. You may cast up to 4 votes in this FPP contest

Megan Earley – Independent $$$$

To me, Megan represents the best of those who seek to represent their community on the Local Board. From what I can tell, this is her first attempt at standing for election, she isn’t affiliated to a ticket, isn’t a professional politician and has the sort of background that screams ‘doing this for the right reasons!’

Aside from being a school teacher, she is also a volunteer, sports coach and manager and committee and board member (presumably for a local softball club). Club Administrator of the Year in 2009, followed up by Volunteer of the Year this year.

All her reasons for standing, what she loves about Owairaka and her priorities should she be elected come down to one thing: mucking in with other community volunteers to make her neighbourhood a better place to live.

Brilliant!

Graeme Easte – City Vision $

“A community activist for many years…” reeks of left-wing busybody. Easte is the founder of the Campaign for Better Transport, trying to make our streets safer through ‘traffic calming’. A term I’ve never seen before, conjuring up images of a wizard blowing copious amounts of marijuana smoke at traffic lights or blasting mindfulness tunes to drift you to sleep while angels push your car in neutral (I might have stolen that from The Simpsons).

This 16 page report from NZTA reveals it is actually all those annoying bloody obstacles sprayed across the street to make driving less fun. After reading the first page crowing the benefits of 20 mph zones in London, vertical features, horizontal features and zonal treatments, I needed pharmaceutical calming.

He appears to endorse the city intensifying and ‘growing up’ rather than sprawling and is very concerned about pressure on facilities, infrastructure and threats to “their very character”.

Well, what is it East with an E? You can’t have everything your own way. Preserving character while intensifying through regulatory extremism is nonsense. There will be no intensification in YOUR neighbourhood but land prices will skyrocket as nosy noddies use every possible legal tool they have to make your neighbours’ lives miserable.

What’s more, he’s concerned that local shopping centres (ie, street corner collections of small businesses) are facing strong competition from the new mall in Newmarket and expansion of St Lukes. He proposes flinging your rate money into subsidising these businesses in a hopeless battle against the malls. They’re large, they’re profitable, they’re clearly where most of us want to shop.

Finally, because we are becoming short on open space, he proposes slicing Chamberlain Golf Course in half. Generally speaking, I’m pro-privatisation but this shortage of open space is Easte’s ideological creation. Abolish the urban boundary and then reduce the pressure on limited open spaces within it!

Finally, he wants to expand his traffic calming hoo-hah while curbing climate change. How are you going to achieve that with slowed, congested traffic idling at your zonal treatments?

Jose Luis Fowler – C&R – Communities & Residents $$$$$

Local businessman, Chair of the local neighbourhood association and a cycling coach at Diocesan (wait, hear me out!).

“Running a local business, I understand how poor decision-making and communication by Council, Albert-Eden Local Board and Auckland Transport causes real-world chaos, costs and delays.”

Unlike some zonally treated twats who’ve spent decades table-thumping inside freezing historic micro-councils, Jose lives in the real world and he’s tired of City Vision’s shit.

Fowler is offering safer neighbourhoods, better community consultation (maybe not the best idea in a City Vision dominated subdivision) and cutting wasteful spending.

Good. More of that!

Julia Maskill – City Vision

Just when my blood pressure was about to return to normal, I have to review another City Vision candidate.

My vision is for a safer community that is caring and inclusive. I will support local business success and sustainability.

I will fight to protect our heritage and ensure well-designed development for our growing population. I stand for protecting nature, a cleaner environment and climate action. I want to help everyone reduce environmental harm, with improved recycling and transport choices.

Uh oh.

I’m a new candidate, standing to fight for Owairaka’s communities and natural environment. I want Owairaka to be a great place to live in 10 and 20 years’ time, and for future generations, even with increasingly intensive development and extreme weather events.

Please, no.

 I think that Local Board decision-making is important because it affects everything we come into contact with as soon as we leave our homes – the air that we breathe, the water we rely on and how we get around. I want to help the Local Board fully flex its muscle (sic) and support communities’ responses to the climate change emergency, both by reducing carbon emissions and adapting to survive predicted extreme weather events and sea level rise.

Oh, fuck off! I’m sorry. I know that language brings down the standard of this voting guide even further. But this is a serious candidate standing for a serious citywide political ticket offering the biggest bucket of crap I’ve come across. We’re only up to the second ward!

If I’m elected, I will use my “climate emergency glasses”

Ladies and gentlemen, your low voter turnout.

Anthony McGivern – C&R – Communities and Residents $$$$

McGivern reckons the current Local Board is not working for Owairaka. If the current Local Board just stopped working completely, they would triple their effectiveness.

Anthony has a commercial background in infrastructure and strategic leadership across private and public sectors. If I were elected to this Local Board, I’d show up 5 minutes early and lock the doors. Looks like Anthony is probably better qualified for the position.

He supports several charities and coaches school orienteering. It sounds like nerds going outside but maybe I’m just a little grumpy after reading that Maskill idiot’s profile.

Anthony looks like he’s had his profile written for him because it also mentions cutting wasteful spending and prioritising outcomes communities want. That’s fine by me.

Monique Poirier – C&R – Communities and Residents $$$

I’m a little worried by Monique. She has a Master’s degree in political studies and easily looks young enough to have completed that under the Post-Modernist Social Justice regime which pervades the humanities departments in universities now.

However she is a business owner, has had enough of the council and wants to cut wasteful spending. I’d have thought a Master’s degree in political studies was wasteful spending but at least that’s her own money.

I’m sure Monique would be a great improvement on the existing four City Vision incumbents.

Christina Robertson – City Vision

Maybe it’s a Freudian trick of the light, but at least one of Christina’s lenses appears to be rose coloured.

Christina needs to understand that less is more when it comes to pitching for people’s votes. Eleven paragraphs of sparkles, lollipops and psilocybin poetry splattered with quad-syllabled enviro-nut, calligraphic interpretative dance ain’t gonna cut it with me.

Victoria Tupou – Independent $

Victoria has a cat. I like cats. Spaced out City Vision candidates probably don’t. I like Victoria.

She does claim to be experienced in community building. I’m not sure what that means. Is she going to knock on my door with a cake or knock down the fence dividing our properties?

Further reading of her profile reveals a lot of communitarian themed words indicating she is going to keep everyone happy. I’ve changed my mind.

By the way, cats lie on you because you’re a source of heat.

Kristina Walkley – C&R – Communities and Residents $$$

Walkley is Head Teacher at a Pt Chev community kindergarten. That’s plenty of real world experience right there. Point Chevalier has an assortment of socio-economic demographics so when Kristina says she knows how hard families have to work to provide for their children, I believe her.

Her profile isn’t too different from the other C&R candidates, though it doesn’t mention anything about wasteful spending. Maybe she’s the mild-lefty of the bunch?

Margi Watson – City Vision $$$$

Margi is the only City Vision candidate that has gone to the effort of putting statistics and facts into her profile. That deserves some respect and also explains why she was the highest polling candidate of both subdivisions of the Albert-Eden Local Board in 2016 with 7292 votes.

How the hell Peter Haynes, with 5142 votes, the lowest of all the successful candidates, became Chairman of the Local Board is absolutely baffling. He must have some serious dirt on his colleagues.

Margi claims that following the opening of the SH20 Waterview project, she fought for and secured $64 million of benefits for the surrounding communities. Now I understand if you think she’s overplaying her hand, being just one of eight Local Board members. However, Local Board’s aren’t known for being crammed with insanely dedicated workaholics, speed-reading volumes of reports til midnight before waking at 4am for tai-chi and motivational podcasts. Maybe she did do it single-handedly.

She appears to have an eye for detail, an impressive knowledge of the area and her job and hasn’t mentioned “climate emergency” once.

Oh, “climate change action” is right down the bottom. Probably for tokenism’s sake.

MY RECOMMENDATIONS:  You have up to 4 votes in this FPP contest

• Jose Luis Fowler – C&R – Communities and Residents
• Megan Early – Independent
• Margi Watson – City Vision
• Monique Poirier – C&R – Communities and Residents