What I stand for: fresh thinking

The first of my top 5 issues on the Elections2010 website at http://www.elections2010.co.nz/2010/candidates/mike-mellor is a revitalised city council:

•Councillors with energy, fresh ideas and independent minds who listen and respond

I think that it's time for a change in the Eastern Ward. We need fresh faces and fresh ideas, and councillors who think and act independently and constructively. The Eastern Ward is growing and vibrant, and needs councillors to match.

The time is ripe for fresh ideas around transport, heritage, environment and communities, and I'll look at each of these areas in later posts.

•A council that is fair, transparent and open

Sometimes the council moves in mysterious ways. An example this week is that on Tuesday the mayor psented Forest & Bird with an award for their Places for Penguins programme, protecting little blue penguin habitats (many of them in the Eastern Ward); the next day she led the Strategy & Policy Committee into selling off a piece of council-owned land on the South Coast, threatening just the sort of habitat that Forest & Bird have worked so hard to protect.

Very odd, but not that unusual. In the case of the Indoor Community Sports Centre on Cobham Drive (of which more in a later posting) a council that ostensibly supports cycling and walking and promotes public transport on the Growth Spine along SH1, designed a facility where 95% of patrons are assumed to come by car, with no safe way of getting to the Evans Bay walkway & cycleway just metres away because it's the other side of four-lane 70 km/h Cobham Drive. (It required the Environment Court to make them see some sense in this.)

There are other examples, and that's no way to run a council.

•A council that is in touch with its communities
 
This is a very mixed bag. I was a member of the group that assisted the council produce the Kilbirnie Town Centre Revitalisation Plan, an excellent exercise that involved a whole cross-section of people who live, work, shop and play in Kilbirnie, many of whom gave substantial amounts of time. The plan that emerged, while it had many good points, in my opinion missed some major targets. For instance, the only public transport initiative was to improve the bus shelters, failing to acknowledge the point that Kilbirnie is the hub of the eastern suburbs public transport network, and needs a lot more than shelter improvements to reflect that fact. Fortunately, support for facilities for buses and their users was that strong (92% in favour!) that the council has improved the plan. They listened to the community - eventually.
 
So what will be different with me as a councillor?
 
You'll have a fresh face, committed to listening and to a council that's consistent and sticks to its own principles. You'll have someone who's lived here for nearly 20 years, who has been involved in lots of local and city-wide community issues, who has worked with the council from outside for many years, making many submissions and attending many meetings. You'll have someone who is not afraid to take things to the line when necessary, when principles and community issues need to be stood up for.
 
I look forward to your putting me no.1 on your Eastern Ward ballot paper!