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Post by GO30 on Sept 19, 2022 15:26:13 GMT 12
Hell yes, in fact that person just made me have to vote and vote for them.
Who said it Sloop?
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Post by GO30 on Sept 19, 2022 15:27:00 GMT 12
what a surprise!. This is an email 12 July 2017, one of a series of exchanges I was having with Councillor Greg Sayers View Attachmentthe writing was on the wall a long time ago Good on ya CZ, keep at it.
Did you get a response?
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Post by sloopjohnb on Sept 19, 2022 15:36:49 GMT 12
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Post by fish on Sept 19, 2022 16:10:06 GMT 12
The council has 11,000 full-time equivalent employees. That is more than 1% of the Auckland workforce.
What these wonderful individuals do is beyond me but given that the council spent $109m on consultants and professional services, and a further $269m on outsourced works and services, there are grounds to question their productivity.
The city has a clear choice. Efeso Collins’ priorities are climate change, light rail and free local transport. He represents continuity with Phil Goff’s administration, and given his backing by both Labour and the Greens, should have a better relationship with Wellington than his more abrasive opponent.
Wayne Brown will take Auckland in a very different direction. What makes his candidacy exciting or alarming, depending on your perspective, is that he just might have the ability, experience and the determination to turn his policies into reality.
www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/129831412/damien-grant-the-clear-choice-for-aucklands-next-mayor Not without a majority of Councillors he won't If I'm correct in how all of this works, the Mayor appoints the Chairs of each of the fancy committees. Or at the least he has enough influence to control who gets the plum positions. Therefore, everyone blows smoke up his arse so they can get the influential positions. Anyone that opposes him gets given some bullshit consultation steering group with no budget. The Mayor then makes sure his mates get the budgets to splash around and look fancy. So the Mayor doesn't necessarily 'need' a majority, he gets a majority because all the Councillors are greedy for power and influence. Anyone who opposes the Mayor gets left out, can't make an impact or get any cut through. Like Dr Sharma, the MP for Hamilton East. I call this nepotism, but apparently its called our political system
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Post by eri on Sept 19, 2022 19:02:34 GMT 12
i've voted wayne brown
and the 6 councilors of goff's hated 'communities and residents'
needed 1 other so went with
mike burton of 'rock the vote' because his blurp says
"....out of control spending. too much power given to unelected..."
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Post by fish on Sept 19, 2022 21:23:38 GMT 12
I'll vote Wayne Brown. Anybody but Collins. Brown looks to be the strongest option. That and he actually has a stella track record sorting out big problem organisations. I'm hoping he will initiate a nationwide war on the 'Neo-Elite Beuacracy', which really needs sorting out. My ward councillors will be the two incumbents, who are doing a good job. One got a code of conduct complaint for saying giving 50% control of the Hauraki Gulf Forum to Iwi was twaddlebollocks. CoC complaint got thrown out (after 3 months) and was stated as clearly a move to politically gag the guy from speaking the truth. So I'll send him back in for more.
I'm going to have a very close look at the local board options. There are some really extreme fruitloops running for Mayor and Councillor positions. And I'm not talking the anit-vax and 1080 fluride people. Lisa Lewis is running for mayor for some reason (the hooker). No problem with that, she would make an excellent pollie (knows how to get screwed with a smile on her face). But her story is missing the whole 'why' bit. Looks like she is after cheap publicity. There is a vegan animal rights activist, and a couple of others that are clearly off their meds.
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Post by ComfortZone on Sept 19, 2022 21:58:37 GMT 12
what a surprise!. This is an email 12 July 2017, one of a series of exchanges I was having with Councillor Greg Sayers View Attachmentthe writing was on the wall a long time ago Good on ya CZ, keep at it.
Did you get a response?
Actually I did back then, he said the council officers were stonewalling him avoiding answering questions about the budget. They then moved the project to separate development company and claimed commercial confidence
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2022 8:26:32 GMT 12
Collins is a labour infidel/ plant...
He will be Goff2 without cred but pushing the racial card.
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Post by sloopjohnb on Sept 20, 2022 10:00:12 GMT 12
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Post by GO30 on Sept 20, 2022 15:17:38 GMT 12
Nice, Mr Brown it is. I hope he's not a fuckwit.
Apart from him I'd vote for Wayne Walker and John Watson. 2 dudes who I have interacted with and were bloody good in helping us fend off Panuku. Both were religated to Goffs B Team as they wants to help the citizens of Auckland. They are not in my ward though.
Darby is but he's a hard, very hard No. He is one of the 6 who run Auckland, unlike Goff for one example.
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Post by dutyfree on Sept 20, 2022 18:13:47 GMT 12
Have not got our papers yet
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Post by eri on Sept 21, 2022 19:31:51 GMT 12
get your vote in for wayne brown
or have yet another leftie spending YOUR riates to support HIS people
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Post by muzled on Aug 21, 2024 21:44:55 GMT 12
Maybe Luxons speech at the local govt convention will give the disconnected lefties a wake up.
LGNZ are the organisation that were bribed given taxpayer money by Nanaia Mahuta to endorse the last Government’s anti-democratic 'Three Waters', despite LGNZ (apparently) standing for ‘localism’ and ‘democracy’ – the very things Three Waters would have undermined...
LGNZ are also the organisation that two years ago literally banned the Taxpayers’ Union (including our supporters, like you!) from attending their previous conference, which was ironically titled “The Future of Local Government”.
They must be short of money (their largest members, Auckland and Christchurch City Councils, recently pulled their membership) because this year they've let me in!
The conference started this afternoon. After 47 minutes of pōwhiri, the Mayor of Wellington Tory Whanau gave the first speech (introduced as a 'welcome to Wellington').
The Mayor's main point was that “we should decide” about having Māori wards. And no, she wasn’t saying that “we” local communities should decide on Māori wards, she meant we the politicians should decide!
Following Ms Whanau was the Prime Minister, Chris Luxon. Mr Luxon was allocated just 10 minutes for the three day conference.
Rather than wait for the media (and the left-wing mayors to scream from the rooftops), I thought it best to just send it straight to you.
As you'll see below the speech was extraordinary.
The room was dumbfounded. To call the audience disrespectful would be an understatement (turkeys don’t welcome an early Christmas, after all).
The room literally laughed when the MC (Kim Hill) thanked the Prime Minister.
But from a ratepayer perspective (I seem to be literally the only ‘ratepayer’ person here!) is this best speech at a local government conference in a generation?
Judge for yourself:
Rt Hon Christopher Luxon
Prime Minister
21 August 2024
Speech to LGNZ SuperLocal conference
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora and good afternoon, everyone.
Before I begin, I’d like to thank LGNZ for their invitation to speak here today.
I spend a lot of time meeting with many good mayors and councillors across the country, but this is a great opportunity to speak to so many of you here all at once.
So, thank you to LGNZ for that opportunity, and more importantly, thank you to each of you for stepping into the public square and serving your communities in these roles.
I’d also like to acknowledge Minister Simon Watts and, in particular, Minister Simeon Brown, who are here.
As you know, Simeon is responsible for the Local Government portfolio, has an ambitious reform programme, and has accomplished a lot in a very short period of time. So, thank you, Simeon, for all of your hard work and leadership.
New Zealand faces big infrastructure challenges - Water. Transport. Resilience. And each of those will be absolutely critical to get right.
We know your communities need the tools to sustainably finance the necessary investment. So, we’re making changes.
Through changes agreed by the Local Government Funding Authority, we're alleviating pressure on council debt caps, which will relieve a lot of pressure on fast-growing councils.
We’re presenting a suite of options for achieving local water reform that will satisfy ratings agencies' concerns while maintaining local control of water.
We’re also taking a hard look at a range of rules and regulations that incur costs that central government directly loads onto councils. Traffic management is a good example of an area we know desperately needs change.
And Simeon Brown will soon present more detail on our framework for Regional Deals – how they will work, what we want to enable for communities, and, most importantly, what we expect in return.
So, we’re doing our part. And I believe it’s time for local government to do theirs.
Ratepayers expect local government to do the basics and to do the basics brilliantly. Pick up the rubbish. Fix the pipes. Fill in potholes. And more generally, maintain local assets quickly, carefully, and cost effectively.
But nothing in life is free, and ratepayers expect to pay for it in exchange. But what they don’t expect to pay for is the laundry-list of distractions and experiments that are plaguing council balance sheets across the country.
The building we’re in today is a classic example. With pipes bursting and other infrastructure under pressure, Wellington City Council decided to spend $180 million of ratepayers’ money on a convention centre, which, according to public reporting, is now losing money.
It looks very nice, and it’s very nice that politicians like us have another expensive room to deliver speeches in, but can anyone seriously say it was the right financial decision or the highest priority for Wellington given all of its challenges?
Ratepayers are sick of the white elephants and non-delivery. So, my challenge to all of you is to rein in the fantasies and to get back to delivering the basics brilliantly.
Councillors often tell me that they agree with all that, but there’s a problem. They just need more help from central government, usually in the form of cold, hard cash.
I have to be honest with you – the previous government might have taken that approach, but the party is over.
There is no magic money tree in Wellington, thanks to the previous government's economic mismanagement and vandalism.
Shifting your costs onto taxpayers doesn’t save anyone any money. It means ratepayers pay more tax, and are left with less of their own money, to meet the cost of a slightly smaller rates bill.
Or it means we spend less on health and education so that councils can avoid tightening their belts exactly as Kiwi families, businesses and central government have had to do across New Zealand.
Yes, I’m sure that will be very popular among councillors, who want to spend money without raising rates to pay for it. But if any of you think those will be the terms of a regional deal, it’s time to come back to reality.
We do want to work closer together – and there will be new revenue tools for councils, where that makes sense – but the days of handouts are over.
I know some councils already well understand that new operating environment and they are taking their responsibility to ratepayers very seriously.
Thank you for those efforts, because your unrelenting focus on delivering value for money is making a real difference in your communities.
Finally, if there was any doubt about our commitment to getting local government back to basics, I have some announcements to make today on our local government work programme.
First, Cabinet has agreed to streamline the purpose provisions in the Local Government Act to get councils back to basics.
For Councils, that means abolishing the four wellbeing provisions in legislation and restoring focus on local services and infrastructure.
For ratepayers, it’s simple. The central government focuses on must-haves, not nice-to-haves, and we expect local government to do the same.
Second, Cabinet has agreed to investigate performance benchmarks for local councils, similar to the approach some Australian states apply to their local authorities.
In theory, the Local Government Act establishes the accountability of local authorities to the communities they serve. But in reality, it’s difficult to get consistent, easily accessible and comparable information about how councils are actually performing.
The performance measures we’re looking to introduce are in areas councils should already be monitoring closely, such as financial performance and customer service delivery.
But sunlight is the best disinfectant – and ratepayers deserve to know exactly what they’re getting for their rates.
Third, Cabinet has agreed to investigate options to limit council expenditure on ‘nice-to-haves’.
In some Australian states, revenue caps are applied to non-core activities to control rates increases.
We’re interested in how a similar approach could work here in New Zealand, ensuring the right balance between ratepayers' interests and councils' financial positions.
Yes, councils need adequate revenue to fund core responsibilities like roads, rubbish and water, but the value-for-money proposition is more questionable in a range of other areas.
Councils need to examine those areas more closely, and I’m up for any tool – like revenue capping – that makes them do so.
Fourth, Cabinet has agreed to review the transparency and accountability rules that apply to councils.
It’s unacceptable that the rules as they stand today allow unelected officials, in many cases, to prevent elected members from accessing the information they need to represent their communities. We will review those settings.
There have been too many absurd scenarios in which ratepayers are effectively shut out of decision-making because elected members’ rights to access information are treated as a secondary consideration.
My expectation is we find a way to end those practices.
In conclusion, we want a productive and constructive relationship with local government – one that enables your growth and development and gives you the tools you need to pay for it.
But we expect you to spend ratepayers’ money responsibly. In short, localism comes with both rights and responsibilities.
In central government, we’re getting on with the job. We're stopping wasteful spending, shifting money from the back office to the frontline, setting clear delivery targets and expectations, prioritising what to do and what not to do, and letting Kiwis keep more of what they earn.
My parting message: it’s time for you to do the same.
Go line by line, stop the wasteful spending, remove the bureaucracy, focus on better customer service, and end the projects that aren’t delivering value for money.
Ratepayers don’t expect much – they just want the basics done brilliantly.
We’ll play our part – now it’s time for you to play yours.
I’m confident that working together, we can achieve a lot for New Zealanders – better infrastructure and more resilient communities, all at an affordable price for ratepayers.
Thank you.
ENDS
Immediately following the Prime Minister, the Labour-aligned President of Local Government New Zealand, Sam Broughton, got up and tried to put the boot into Mr Luxon.
Broughton said that criticism of local government "is not productive". That got a loud cheer from the attendees in the room. He also called on new ways for councils to tax local communities, in addition to rates! 🤦
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Post by fish on Aug 22, 2024 8:54:24 GMT 12
Someone has to tell them.
Having presented to LGNZ at conference, I can say they are the most closed minded and insular bunch I have ever come across.
It probably wouldn't have mattered what Luxon said, they would have given him a cold reception regardless. A, he's wasn't blowing smoke up their arses (which is a pre-requisite to not getting a cold reception), and B, he's white and male.
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Post by muzled on Aug 23, 2024 10:17:39 GMT 12
Someone has to tell them. Having presented to LGNZ at conference, I can say they are the most closed minded and insular bunch I have ever come across. It probably wouldn't have mattered what Luxon said, they would have given him a cold reception regardless. A, he's wasn't blowing smoke up their arses (which is a pre-requisite to not getting a cold reception), and B, he's white and male. The LGNZ reps get all their expenses paid (airfares/accom/food) to attend the 48 minute powhiri and ensuing 3 day yarnfest. What a junket. Good to see Akl and Chch pulled out of it. Nice new word from Michael Laws - 'troughateers' theplatform.kiwi/podcasts/episode/dunedin-city-councillor-lee-vandervis-talks-te-pae-maoriAmusing interview, never heard of Lee van dervis but he's pretty easy to like from the first sentence.
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