The day-to-day business of local boards is decision making on local matters, specifically for local parks, events, arts and recreational services and facilities, community facilities, libraries and environmental management.
Last month I outlined how we govern our local board budget and decide on locally driven initiatives to meet local needs, and see these projects through. This is a big enough role in itself, but this month I outline some of the other roles I have as chair of the inner city local board helping to shape Auckland’s direction.
I sit as local board representative on Auckland City Centre Advisory Board, with representatives of many city centre sector groups such as business and residents, universities, and the private sector, advising council on all matters affecting the city centre. The board primarily oversees the expenditure of the city centre targeted rate collected from city businesses and residents, on top of general rates all other Aucklanders pay, to the tune of an additional $20.8 million per annum. The additional rate funds improvements to the city centre, and has been fundamental over many years now in seeing the revival of the city centre as a more pedestrian-friendly international city centre, with its shared spaces and improved public spaces and facilities.
The next project is a significant improvement to K’Road’s pedestrian environment and
a dedicated cycleway. Many think the city centre is getting more than its fair share of your rates, but it is primarily this additional rate that has funded the transformation of our city centre outside the waterfront, and will continue to do so.
I am also the board’s representative on the Heart of the City business association executive that represents CBD businesses and promotes the city centre as a destination. Heart of the City is the largest by some margin of the many Business Improvement Districts throughout Auckland that rate their business membership through a partnership with council to help build local economies through self-management. HoTC has a BID budget of some $4 million per annum so is a significant player in advocacy and business promotion of the city centre. Local board members ensure oversight of the rate collected, and are the liaison with council. Other members each sit of the Newmarket, K’Road, Ponsonby, Parnell and Uptown BIDs, which collectively constitute about 45% of Auckland’s economic activity.
I am deputy chair of the Auckland Domain Committee, which has governance of the regionally significant Auckland Domain, with two other local board members. This is the only joint committee of the Governing Body, Independent Maori Statutory Board and
a local board of Auckland Council, and has recently overseen the publication of a first draft masterplan and events protocol for the Domain. The plan will be finalised shortly.
I am chair of the Central Facilities Partnership Committee; a collective of the seven Isthmus and Gulf Islands local boards that has overseen council investment in new community, or school facilities on a partnership basis.
The committee decided which community improvement projects to support; whether they were multi-sport clubroom upgrades, school arts pavilions, or sportsfield artificial turfing. Support enabled fundraising committees to seek Foundation North, or sports trust funding to supplement their fundraising efforts, and complete some significant projects with hard won efforts. In return community access arrangements lasting many years were agreed.
In the past five years some $45 million worth of projects have been supported for $10 million of rates-funded investment. The committee has recently celebrated the opening of the upgraded Mt Wellington Tennis Club, the Tri-Star Gymnastics Pavilion in Mt Roskilll, the Joyce Fisher Sport Centre at Epsom Girls Grammar, and will see the new clubrooms of the West End Tennis Club at Cox’s Bay opened shortly.
The Mayor abolished the $2 million per year central fund supporting this rates-friendly system last year, to part-fund a new $10 million capital fund made available to all local boards, in turn replacing a nearly equivalent Small Local Improvement Projects budget already available to central local boards. The result is that individual local boards cannot possibly do what the partnership fund did on anything approaching the same project scale, and projects must complete with demands for smaller local parks and council facility priority projects.
The committee remains to oversee the remaining incomplete projects it has supported, and to advocate for the re-establishment of the scheme. Community groups with projects still in the pipeline, like Richmond Rovers League Club of Grey Lynn Park are left wondering where their project seed funds are to come from. This is one example of financial prudence running counter to good community outcomes.
(SHALE CHAMBERS)
Contact me: shale.chambers@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz