Tough Choices

As I write this column, I am aware that there is an elephant in the room. What of the Rodney Local Board’s Transport Targeted Rate proposal?  At the time of meeting this publication’s deadline, the local board has not voted on the proposal. In fact, it has postponed the vote until May 24 to allow more time to consider the implications of the draft Regional Land Transport Plan.  

Whatever the outcome, this has not been an easy process for us politically. One would think that we have raised this possibility simply to make ourselves unpopular, but what could our motivation be?

We consistently hear that transport is a priority for Rodney, that the local board is “toothless”, lacks influence, and that our residents want more local decisions made locally.

You may recall where this all started. We have all been paying $114 on our rates bill as an Interim Transport Levy for the past three years.  Many people believe that we have not seen any benefit from this rate, and that the money has all gone towards central city projects. So the local board asked: how can we ring fence the levy so that it is only spent in Rodney? The answer to that question is that the only mechanism that would achieve the objective of having 100 per cent of the money collected in Rodney, spent in Rodney, was via a targeted rate.

Whatever is decided, it has been a very useful exercise for a number of reasons. It has highlighted the constraints the local board has to work within – a very small footpath budget and only advocacy on road sealing and parking. It’s revealed that there are options open to us, if the public want us to use them. And it has given some very useful feedback that we can take to the Governing Body of Auckland Council to demonstrate the frustrations of our residents.

We have had one of two choices: not to implement a targeted rate and continue to work with an inadequate budget to address the long list of footpath requests, and a continuation of the current rate of road sealing; or, implement the targeted rate and finally start to see things happening.  In other words, we have the ability to do something about this, make some progress, or still be talking about it next year and the year after, and again in three years at the next long-term planning cycle.

The decision may be unpopular either way, but do you want your elected representatives to be more concerned about their re-election, or to be courageous and seek the change they came into this job to make?  In the words of another more famous (or infamous) politician: “We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Beth Houlbrooke, Rodney Local Board
beth.houlbrooke@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz