Posts Tagged ‘Local Government’

Open season for trees

The Resource Management Act (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill is currently in the house. I've spent a bit of time to watch the debate, with particular interest in section 52 of the Bill.

The bill is not finalised so I'm not going to put it here. You can view the most updated version here. In a nutshell, the bill prohibits a district plan that prohibits tree removing, unless the tree is expressively protected in the district plan.

There are at least several concerns for this.

Firstly central government should not intervene local government businesses at such level of detail. District Plans have to give effects or at least have regard to several national documents, is not that enough? Every part of the country has its unique environment and situation, why the central government thinks it knows better than locals?

Secondly, this bill removes an important mechanism to protect urban enviroment. Environment minister Nick Smith argued that 98% of tree related concents are granted, therefore it is just a waste of time. Now here is an example of incompetency, he seems to forgot that consents can be granted with conditions and modifications.

Thirdly, it is likely to add unnessary workload for local authorities. I do expect an increased number of surveying in order to put more trees in the schedule after the law is passed, but happens for an area of unprotected bush? Waitakere is a good example - scheduling each single tree would be a process that you would never want to do it again.

Key announces amended version of super city

The Government has backed an Auckland 'super city' council and says it should be in place in time for next year's local body elections. ... Rather than having six local councils, there will be between 20 and 30 community boards. These will not be able to raise revenue or appoint staff. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Local democracy was identified by many, including myself, as the major problem of the Royal Commission report. However, I don't see this is best the solution. I disliked community boards from start, waste of time, not many actually attends, and its power cannot change much for the community. I prefer the parliamentary electorate style, each community elects its own member to the Auckland Council, the member manage local issues and represent that at the higher level.

Anyway, the difference in government recommendation[pdf] is, community boards will gain extra power, such as :

• advocate for their local community and have input into the Auckland Council’s plans
• develop local operational policies for local issues, for example dog control, liquor licensing and graffiti control
• influence the Auckland Council by petitioning for extra services that their community wants. Services would be paid for through a targeted rate for the local area, a local rate rise or a change in priorities. The local boards will not have the power to set rates, so any rate rise would have to be agreed by the Auckland Council.

Can you imagine 30 sets of dog control and and operational policies? Anyone who still thinks the change will save their rate bill should check if the sky in their little world is still blue. Also I did not notice anything in that report mentioning the delivery of council services,  does that mean all people need to travel to Auckland CBD to get their resource consent done?

The grand council will increase overall efficiency but I don't see a way that could reduce overall costs in both Royal Commission and government report.

Also another thing worth noticing:

Nice try. So National.

So ... end of tree huggers?

Councils say they will not be able to stop people cutting down native bush and coastal pohutukawa in cities under planned changes to environment laws.

The Government wants to take away councils' power to stop trees over a certain size being chopped without permission. If the change goes ahead, landowners will be free to cut down any tree on their land unless it is listed in their council's district plan. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Oppositions to the councils' tree management claim that "it's their land so they should be able to do anything they like", but let's face it, it's no different than how a teenager feels like "I'm free and independent so I  can do what ever I want", we all get that kind of feeling during our adolescence time, most grow out of it, but sadly, some don't.

The basic principle of the Resource Management Act is the "effect based approach", as long as you can demonstrate that you can minimise the adverse effects on  environment, even a non-complying activity can get a go ahead.  I was a "tree hugger",which means that use trees as an excuse to stop development in quite a few cases,  in one case, a two storey new residential development is proposed on about two lots away from my friend's house, developer wants to chop down a 60m+ tree to provide an extra one or two parking spaces.

From my friend's  point of vew it's actually quite hard to see that tree, just the top part,  but I still criticized the development plan anyway because this is just too ridiculous. If development cannot get ahead without chopping down that tree I may just let it go, but such a tall tree for a mere parking space? Quite a lot of people still don't treat environment protection as part of citizens' responsibility, and think that as optional.

Property right was never absolute, before the current law system there were several common law principles existed, such as good neighbourliness, as long as you don't affect your neighbours' economic well-being then you should be fine. But we don't live in the beginning of the industrial age, we understand the value of our environment more than just a place to dump all our wastes for free.

Not a good one from National, I say, central government should minimise its influence on local government.

More on RMA changes

just got this file, and inside there are, in my opinion  some worrying trend.

Since the RMA nobody, no political parties have changed the definition of the word "Environment", it's the footstone of the legislation, change it would mean a new law is created. Well I guess that's why National wants to change it, that's the most easy way to divert the way we were heading without abolishment of the whole law.

So for those who are not very familiar with the RMA, here's current definition of "Environment":

Environment includes:

(a) ecosystems and their constituent parts, including people and communities; and

(b)all natural and physical resources; and

(c)Amenity values; and

(d)the social, economic, aestheic and cultural condition of which are affected by those matters

Second part of (a) is most vulnerable to the next law change. Act would definitely like to see it removed, National ... don't know, old guards like to see it go, don't know much about how John Key take on this issue.

Some pats in (d) are also vulnerable.

I think for most people, the question "whether we are part of the environment" should be a no brainer. The real issue here is whether Resource Management Act should cover people like us - well go and check the purpose of the RMA:

Sustainable management means managing the use, development ... which enables people and communities to provide for their social, eocnomic, and cultural wellbeing and for their health and safety while ...

:)

Another strange thing regarding RMA from Nats' policy is about the resource consent. If a council did not process it on time, then it's free.  I don't want to spend too much time on this, because you don't need a brainy Chinese kid, even a dumb one can tell you council can simply use gibberish excuses to decline the consent application before exceeds the the statutory timeframe, not to mention there are also some clauses that allow councils to extend deadline, legally.

To get the job done, you either exploit people's labour, or pay enough.

Bigger is greater?

The Royal Commission’s report on Auckland Governance will be presented to the Governor-General at end of March this year. However, I saw in the news yesterday that John seemed so eager to get that “Lord Mayor” post he jumped out to claim that title months before the final report.

Auckland region is NZ’s economic powerhouse and has about 1/3 of total New Zealand population. Any changes on how Auckland is governed should be considered in national, even international context. As a student in this area I was fully aware of the issue, and made a submission myself.

In my opinion, a super, single council is simply not viable, and I believe the Royal Commission should understand this fact too. The coverage of the authority is just too wide, if it controls 1.4 million people from Wellsford to Bombay, this council will grow enormously big, effectively become another central government of New Zealand, creating even more confusion and more red tapes to make this monstrous authority work.

Another risk of creating a big, super council is that, no matter who runs it, that Lord Mayor is likely to run the whole region the way he managed his smaller council before. Now there’s problem, most of us think all district councils in Auckland region as part of the same “Auckland”, but in real life each district has its own local identity and, sometimes culture as well. An obvious example jumped out of my mind is Waitakere City’s “EcoCity”.

Auckland will become one, super city eventually, but not now. The problem facing Auckland is not much of the red tape, it’s local councils' very short sighted, self centred vision and lack of policy consistency across the region. The region, especially metropolitan areas are becoming more connected and a lot of decisions, like the Rugby World Cup, will likely to affect several councils.

I think there’s two ways to go. First is to create a new super council but with smaller jurisdiction area. What I prefer is to include Auckland Metropolitan Area and some parts of rural land for future development and buffer. Regional Council stays but all city councils must go.

I also liked the idea of elect councillors based on electorate-like wards. If this is the case, however, I don’t think there’s a need for a Lord Mayor, or even councillors. Each City elects one Mayor as a person should be enough, and those mayors become councillors of the bigger council.

The only viable route for a region wide super council, is to maintain current local councils to be at least some kind of services branches of a super council.

No matter which way it goes,  our adolescent-like urge to change is likely to stay for a while longer.