The commission has rejected applications for proposed new unitary councils in both Northern Rodney and Waiheke Island (Photo / Richard Robinson).

Bid to break away from Auckland fails

Author: Simon Collins,
Publish Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2017, 3:49pm

A battle by Northern Rodney residents to break away from Auckland Council will move to Parliament after the Local Government Commission turned down the secession bid.

The commission has rejected applications for proposed new unitary councils in both Northern Rodney and Waiheke Island, saying that both would be too small to take over Auckland Council's regional functions particularly managing "sensitive marine environments".

Northern Action Group chairman Bill Townson, who has led the Rodney group since it lodged its bid to leave Auckland in 2013, said the group would now move to "Plan B and Plan C".

"Plan B is we are seriously considering legal action. We have to get in before December 22 and we'll be talking to our lawyers," he said.

"Plan C is the promised binding referendum that New Zealand First has promised, and they are working on that."

He said NZ First leader Winston Peters and Warkworth-based list MP Tracey Martin promised before the election that they would support changing the law if necessary to achieve a referendum on the proposed split.

A referendum could have been held under the existing law if the commission had recommended a change, but is not possible under the current law because the commission has not recommended any change to the status quo.

The action group has already gone to the High Court once to challenge the commission's initial decision in 2014 not to assess its application. The court ruled that the commission was wrong in law, and the commission then agreed to consider the application.

It determined last year that the area affected by the application was the whole Auckland Council area, and called for "alternative applications". A Waiheke Island group submitted an alternative application for a unitary council for the island.

Auckland Council, created by Parliament without a referendum in 2010, is one of the country's five unitary councils, which combine the functions of regional and district councils.

Northern Rodney, with 24,000 people, and Waiheke (9000) would be smaller than three of the other four unitary councils Tasman (50,000), Gisborne (48,000) and Marlborough (45,500), although bigger than the Chatham Islands (600).

The proposed Northern Rodney unitary council would cover the area from Puhoi to Te Hana (Photo / NZ Herald)

A report for the commission by consultants Morrison Low found in August that a Northern Rodney unitary council would face a deficit of $13.5 million a year based on the current costs of Auckland Council services for the area and current rates.

It said rates would have to jump by 48 per cent to cover the deficit.

However a report by Rotorua-based APR Consultants for the Northern Action Group on November 14 challenged Morrison Low's assumption that the costs of Auckland Council services for the area would not change.

Instead, APR assumed that the costs would be about the same as for the Tasman, Gisborne and Marlborough unitary councils, and estimated that the operating position of a Northern Rodney unitary council would be between a $5.5m deficit and a $5m surplus.

Townson said the commission refused to consider the APR report because it was received too late.

The commission's final decision says Morrison Low over-estimated the amount of debt, and costs related to "regional sports, other overheads and finance", that would be taken on by a Northern Rodney council. On this basis it now says a Northern Rodney council would have a deficit of between $5.6m and $7.6m, requiring a rates increase of 20 to 27 per cent.

It says a Waiheke unitary council would have a deficit of between $1.2m and $2m a year, requiring rate hikes of 8 to 13 per cent.

It found that splitting either area out of Auckland Council would also "fragment the current and future metropolitan areas of Auckland and constrain the council's ability to manage growth in an integrated way".

Townson said an opt-in poll of 2000 people through polling booths in local shops in 2013 found that 94 per cent of Northern Rodney people supported a breakaway.

A UMR poll of 289 people in the Wellsford and Warkworth subdivisions of the Rodney ward, taken for the commission in October, found that 70 per cent supported "a change in the way [local government] is organised" in the Rodney area.

Across a wider sample of 600 in the whole Rodney ward, the main reasons cited for change were a need to invest more in infrastructure (28 per cent), needing more benefits for the amount paid in rates (22 per cent) and Auckland Council being "too big" or "inefficient" (15 per cent).

Rodney Local Board chairwoman Beth Houlbrooke said she was satisfied and relieved by the decision.

"We wouldn't want to be split in two. We have a small enough budget as it is. Halving that would not have been a good outcome overall," she said.

Local board member Tessa Berger also welcomed the decision.

"The Local Government Commission has refused to turn the clock back 63 years on regional governance, and determined that a Northern Rodney unitary authority is unviable," she said.

"This will be no surprise to those who have an understanding for huge range of expertise and services that a unitary authority is legally obligated to deliver. Ratepayers can't be expected to stump up another 20 per cent for rates, and transition costs on top of that."