The end of some services appears likely under Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown’s draft proposal for the long-term plan – the budgetary direction Auckland Council will take over the next 10 years.
Brown called for reform to the council’s overall approach to financial management, and said it needed to “do things differently and break from past practices”.
It’s a direction typified by the proposed approach of ‘sunsetting’ some council services – ending automatic renewal of new services and no new big projects.
The proposal suggests reducing the net operating costs of all parts of the council group, except for Auckland Transport and Watercare during the next three years.
His proposed new direction includes a more reciprocal relationship with Wellington through city deals, more say over transport decisions and GST refunds for council rates.
There is also a return to the promises he made on the campaign trail: cutting spending that doesn’t “shift the dial” and increasing council control of council-controlled organisations such as Auckland Transport.
The proposal would see average residential rate increases of 7.5 percent in the first year, 3.5 percent in the second year and 8 percent in the third, before falling to levels close to inflation.
These and other changes proposed in the draft will be explored by a series of working groups populated by Auckland’s councillors, and consultation with Aucklanders will run from late February to late March next year.
The final version of the long-term plan will then be voted on in June.
Priorities for council spending (ranked out of 10)
But though Brown has floated most of the ideas in his proposal to councillors in a series of workshops, the possibility of service cuts is likely to face some opposition when it comes time to vote.
Brown has talked publicly about a number of elements that show up in the proposal, such as the need for new funding models for local government, but it’s the first time the public has seen all of his wishes spelled out in one place.
In the proposal, Brown said the Auckland Super City had now reached its teenage years and it was time to “grow up: assert Auckland’s role in driving its own future, tackle our big financial challenges and focus on strengthening the long-term financial and physical resilience of the region”.
Brown is critical of the way the Super City has turned out, citing a Royal Commission report from 2009 that set out hopes for the city’s political future.
At the time, the Royal Commission said Auckland Council and the Beehive should have a relationship of “interdependence and partnership”, joint decision-making boards should be established to reduce spending duplication, and Auckland Council should have political influence over some Government decisions.
“None of this has happened as proposed,” Brown said. “We are often treated like any other council and much of what we do is dictated to us through an ever-growing list of unfunded mandates.”
He also levelled criticism at Auckland Council’s “incoherent, duplicative” delivery of things that should be the responsibility of central government.
Brown wants a tighter hand on the purse strings. One big change he has proposed is to axe automatic inflation-pegged budget increases for CCOs and council departments. Instead, they’d be encouraged to find the savings they need to resist inflationary pressure.
CCOs and council departments would also have new expectations of more granular spending reports – “including floor space, computers, vehicles and the like”.
Brown has asked the council to prepare profiles for each department down to a more fine-toothed level. For example, he wants a report on the costs and revenue of Auckland Zoo, rather than just of council-controlled operators Tātaki Auckland Unlimited.
“This will be a significant step forward for transparency and will also empower elected members with information to ask the right questions,” said Brown. “It will complement the greater availability of financial information to elected members.”
The mayor also bemoaned the decisions of previous governing bodies, which have enshrined funding for services that tend to endure.
“We hardly ever stop doing something,” he wrote in his proposal. “Sometimes it is better to do fewer things really well, rather than lots of things poorly. We need to overcome well-intentioned but unjustifiable calls to keep services just because they were there.”
What this means is a reset of prioritised services and “sunsetting”: giving services an expiry date unless they are intentionally renewed.
Cuts to services was a sensitive topic last year as Brown floated his first annual budget. His initial proposal had included cuts to homelessness initiatives and the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, which he walked back after seeing the public response.
But it was the threat of service cuts down the line that Brown essentially used to get a few left-leaning councillors on his side when it came to argue about selling the airport shares.
Though councillors such as Alf Filipaina were steadfast in their resolve to keep the shares, Shane Henderson, Richard Hills and Julie Fairey swallowed the “dead rat” of voting for a partial sale in order to keep services intact.
There were heated moments last October as these compromises were made. Members of the public shouted at Henderson from the gallery for the decision, while he and others were visibly devastated at having to sign off on the asset sale.
Now at this next fork in the path for Auckland Council, it’s likely a number of councillors will be unwilling to sign off on the idea of widespread service cuts.
Much of the argument is likely to come down to just how crucial the service itself is. Brown has said money spent needs to “shift the dial”, and he’s shown that despite all his talk of cost-cutting, he’s not afraid of spending money when he deems it prudent.
His floated idea of a new $3 billion-plus investment fund is one example. He’s also been a cheerleader for Making Space for Water – a plan to buy out flood-damaged homes across the city and develop long parks in their place to act as reservoirs for stormwater.
But like so much in politics, prudence is in the eye of the beholder.
As an engineer Wayne Brown should be horrified at the eye water capital spends proposed by Watercare and AT. The engineering and purchasing departments of both these organisations need to be brought into the 22nd century and reminded that Auckland City has signed up to operate “sustainably”.
I hate to think of the millions of tonnes of CO2 that have been emitted by the contractors installing new storm water pipes along our road over the past 18 months.
Do these organisations have any estimate or idea of the carbon footprints of their projects?
I suggest these two organizations at least “invest” in sending a couple of their smartest engineers to learn how to design, plan and run sustainable engineering projects and establish some standards and benchmarks accordingly including an expected gross carbon footprint .
When putting out the contracts for tender select only contractors with the capability to deliver the projects against or better than those benchmarks.