Arthur
Rising Damp was a popular British sitcom produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV. It broadcast from 2 September 1974 until 9 May 1978. It concerned a sneaky and cunning landlord, who was entirely self-serving and self-interested, and his long-suffering tenants. However, this article concerns our increasingly wet and woke, socialist, self-serving and self-interested city councils and their long-suffering ratepayers. In particular today I highlight the Wellington City Council.
Recently Judith Collins stated that on gaining power her Government would have a serious look into the operations of the Auckland City Council. This is all well and good as it seems to need a thorough examination of its many strange practices including ruining perfectly good roads with minority-used cycle ways to satisfy environmental and cycling extremists, and seemingly doing things not in the majority ratepayers’ interest. It seems as if the ACC now exists solely to further woke causes and socialist ideological agendas of its Councillors and bureaucrats. This is a good proposed move by Collins as ACC needs its swamp draining and it is likely a good vote gatherer from New Zealand’s largest concentration of voters. Hopefully it is not an empty promise and electioneering noise like Rodney Hide’s promise to hold councils to core infrastructure in 2008. All he achieved was losing some weight by dancing on TV. The weight of his election promise disappeared with that.
If only this scrutiny could be extended to other city and town councils, as ratepayers nationwide seem to be suffering ever growing resentment of the autocratic and increasingly secretive and socialist ideologically driven practices of their councils.
So this is a dear Judith request if National gains power. Please extend your look into the ACC into a wider look at various councils nationwide. In particular, I highlight and am concerned with my council, the Wellington City Council
Some things that irk many about the WCC.
Shelley Bay.
This proposed development involves developer Ian Cassells. This is an individual who for the last twenty years has had particular and unexplained influence on the council and its building vision. He has at times seemed like an unelected councillor dispensing his sage advice on how he can build the future; his way. Shelley Bay has turned into a tortuous saga involving backroom deals with iwi leaders ripping off and misleading other iwi members, the council providing council land needed for the development to go ahead and the council eagerly wanting to cave into demands that the council, ergo ratepayers, pay for infrastructure despite it being a developer responsibility. The developer and the council have also misused the affordable housing accord to sneak this through even though most of the apartments are high end and they are effectively creating a wealthy enclave for the elite: another Oriental Bay.
Rates.
They are out of control in Wellington and are pushing those on fixed incomes into being rates refugees. Many of the elderly have to pay rates and limit the use of heaters in winter. Ratepayers with jobs and mortgages have to make sacrifices as well. Rates climb, Council grand visions get bigger and ratepayers get less and less value each year. We are getting a mega cost convention centre from a council massively in debt. Their out of touch CEO a year or two back outlandishly stated the WCC could easily take on more debt. Shortly after a rates rise ensued. Surprise! This is a council of delusional fools who need to pay down debt, not increase it. Of course, all this was a pre-COVID crash but that is not keeping the hubris and foolishness in check.
Subservience to minority groups.
Recently a councillor, Sean Rush was bullied by a small group of lefty cancel culture thugs into bowing to Council woke wetness and Maori unelected influence in the WCC decision-making process. I wrote about it in a previous article. Minority groups like the cycling lobby push through a couple of hundred coordinated submissions (this happens nationwide as they are very organised and vociferous) and hundreds of thousands of ratepayers are inconvenienced with narrowed roads and suburbs and arterial routes constrained so a few hundred cyclists a day can be happy. One part of the fiasco, Island Bay, is here. This is the tip of a cycling fiasco iceberg.
Self-interested groups galore have sway like developers as stated above. If you are a minority group like Maori, Muslims, Gays-rainbows-whatever, elites with vacuous socialist aims, a green communist group, professional offenderati or some bitter under-rock dweller viciously tweeting and posting from Mum’s basement, the WCC will listen and bend to your will. If you are a majority ratepayer you are ignored. Shutting up and paying your rates bill is all you get to do.
Back room deals and sneaky goings on.
See Shelley Bay above. During Celia Wade Brown’s Mayoralty, it was revealed that there was a secret fund that only a few councillors and the CEO knew about and had access to use. See here for an article related to it and the spin to make it less ‘secretive’.
Public consultation is just a box to tick.
What the public thinks is ignored and trampled on by ideological agendas. Recently, one consultation was on a controversial change to housing regulations and a massive slaughtering of suburbs for concentrated high rises based on wildly overinflated numbers that mysteriously changed but were ‘conveniently’ not notified well. See here.
So National/Ms Collins. The ACC is but a tip of a huge local government problem iceberg that needs sorting out. Local government is out of control and has lost direction and its core reason to exist: that is, run the city/town efficiently for all its ratepayers.
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