The Wellington Employers' Chamber of Commerce has asked the following of candidates for the city council:
The Wellington Employers’ Chamber of Commerce believes the calibre of the candidates is an important issue in the coming local government elections. We want to identify candidates who support and acknowledge actions and policies which will enhance Wellington as a good city to do business in. Responses to the following questions will be used by the Chamber to represent our members’ interests.
These are their questions, with my responses.
1. Please outline your vision for Wellington city in 2015?
A thriving, sustainable city that is a place of choice for people to live, work and play
2. Outline the specific initiatives you will support to ensure that Wellington has a business friendly environment.
• Create pedestrian-friendly environments in the CBD and suburban centres, to make them great places to work, shop and visit
• Create an efficient and effective public transport system, reflecting expert opinion worldwide that public transport is the lifeblood of the city
• Minimise non-productive transport costs by increase agglomeration and densification along major transport routes, and encouraging networking through such initiatives as high-speed broadband
3. Name five key priorities you see for infrastructural investment in Wellington over the next five-years.
• High-speed broadband
• Ensure basic services (eg water) are resilient and efficient
• Implement Ngauranga to Airport public transport solutions, including along the Golden Mile
• Fix major constraints to the rail system, eg North-South junction & lack of penetration into city centres
• Focus road expenditure on safety improvements and business and freight traffic, eg TDM, loading zones, possibly truck lanes, recognising that it is impossible to road-build out of congestion, and that international experience shows that expenditure on public transport and freight facilities is a greater stimulant for economic growth than road building for private cars
4. Please identify three courses of action you would want to promote to ensure a vibrant inner central city.
• Increase pedestrian-friendliness and access by public transport
• Divert the subsidy for parking at weekends to a similar subsidy for public transport, noting that parking is just one of the facilities that attracts shoppers, and is of lesser importance in the CBD than in suburban malls because of the CBD’s nature and structure.
• Encourage businesses and others to adopt and beautify public areas, increasing the attractiveness of the CBD
5. Name three actions that you will take to ensure Wellington delivers better service and value to rate payers and residents.
• Listen to ratepayers and residents, and respond
• Investigate properly the effects of major projects, rather than spending millions of dollars of ratepayer money only to have them overturned by the Environment Court (eg Hilton Hotel, moving the Free Ambulance building, the Marine Education Centre), the owner (eg turning the Johnsonville Line into a busway), or simple practical considerations (eg V8 car race). I took WCC to court over the Indoor Community Sports Centre because of its lack of compliance with WCC’s own rules, another elementary and expensive WCC oversight.
• Address residents’ dissatisfaction with current Annual Plan & LTCCP processes, and introduce meaningful performance measures
6. Would you support a rates target so that council’s rates income does not exceed the combined rate of inflation and population growth per year?
No – that’s far too simplistic an approach for a business the size and complexity of WCC. But there does need to be a strategic funding approach, ensuring WCC delivers value for money
7. Do you support the use of differential rates whereby business rate payers pay more than residential rate payers per dollar of rateable land? If so, why?
Where there is a difference in the level of services provided and where business ratepayers have the ability to recover such legitimate costs from their customers, yes.
8. What are your views on Council ownership of non-core assets including trading enterprises of Council i.e. those assets that are not essential to run local government? What do you define as core or strategic assets and why?
Council ownership of non-core assets is justified when it compensates for market failure, avoids monopolistic behaviour or provides a better return than other investments.
Council ownership of non-core land is justified when the land may become core in the future, eg a potential transport corridor
9. What are your views on the council’s use of debt to fund projects? Do you think the council has an appropriate level of debt?
It is normal for a business of WCC’s size to fund some projects through debt, particularly when benefits will accrue to future generations and the same should apply to costs.
I have seen no credible evidence that the current level of debt is unsustainable.
10. What are your views on council use of fees and charges?
WCC consults on this through the Annual Plan and the LTCCP, and the process seems reasonable.
11. Do you think the community should pay for its own water on a user pays basis?
Yes No
Comment
A mixture of the two. Water is a scarce commodity, and should be priced accordingly in order to maximise the economic benefit from its use. But it is also an essential of life and a social commodity, and as such price should not be a barrier to its use for basic needs. I favour user-pays above a basic level, and reducing the pressure on future water supply through such measures as rainwater tanks and grey water usage
12. What role should the council take on climate change and do you support the goal of carbon neutrality?
WCC needs to take steps to minimise its own and the city’s contribution to climate change and to mitigate the effects of such change. It needs to become carbon neutral in its own operations, and to have policies that encourage carbon neutrality in others’ activities. Done correctly, these initiatives will have positive effects both environmentally and economically.
13. What are your views on combining local authority service delivery, and amalgamations with neighbouring authorities? Should we have a super city in Wellington?
We don’t need a super city – there is no major problem that requires such an expensive and disruptive solution. Existing TAs co-operating over particular areas of service delivery is something that is worth exploring.
14. Do you think Councillors should be paid in proportion to the number of meetings they attend, or through a fixed annual fee, or in some other way?
Viewing councillors as purely attenders at official meetings would show a lack of understanding of the extent of their role, and would distort their activities if this were the sole basis of payment. Payment according to responsibility is more appropriate, with the ultimate arbiter being the electorate every three years.
A possible approach would be to carry out an annual formal public review of councillors’ performance, and use that as a basis for remuneration. The reviews done by The Wellingtonian show what could be done, but clearly the process would need a lot of development.
15. Do you think Wellington City Council should open a trade office in China?
No. I see no point in duplicating activities for which MFAT is responsible
16. List five keys issues that you consider need addressing by the Council in the next three-years
• Council decision-making processes re projects (see Q5 above)
• Poor economic and environmental performance of the Golden Mile as the region’s (and hence probably the country’s) busiest public transport corridor, in addition to its other roles
• Lack of public transport integration and lack of provision for freight transport and deliveries, both of these imposing avoidable costs on businesses and residents
• Carbon neutrality and climate change
• Inconsistent and sometimes contradictory WCC policies and behaviours
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