It's not just us

It's not just Shore Can going on ad nauseum about rates and spending.

A Palmerston North councillor, Gordon Cruden, tells us what it's like there, here.

And blogger Insolent Prick has a good piece on the shambles at Auckland City Council here.

Insolent Prick also makes another good point about the City Vision crowd in Auckland:

Their core principles are:

1. Make Auckland City Council more democratic through effective public participation and political accountability
2. Promote a diverse city that provides opportunities for participation and belonging for people from a wide range of social and ethnic backgrounds
3. Conserve our heritage, promote quality urban design and celebrate our arts and diverse cultures
4. Honour the Treaty of Waitangi and continue to strengthen our partnership with tangata whenua
5. Enhance the principles of public service in our Council through responsible social, financial and environmental approaches to the management of the city
6. Implement policies that address social and economic inequalities in the community.

Yes, that is the actual politically correct hogwash that substitutes for policy from that sorry bunch of losers. What is missing from the formula—staggeringly—is not a single commitment to delivering quality roading, water or wastewater services. Nor does CityVision make a single commitment to improving building consents or RMA processes. The touchpoints between ratepayers and local authorities—the services that ratepayers actually use from Council—are the great hole that has been lost in successive local government engagements in the last twenty years. CityVision is simply the apex of absolute disgust with which ratepayers hold local government generally. While CityVision councillors swan off overseas on exhorbitant junkets, ratepayers are seeing less and less actual service delivery. At the same time, in the last six years, local government spending—and ratepayers’ contributions—have grown a massive 60%.That kind of wanton profligacy simply isn’t sustainable.

What CityVision won’t tell you is that they hiked rates more rapidly than any other Council in Auckland history.

The simple point from all this is that councils need to be accountable for the rates money they take off citizensn, and councillors need to have clear messages on what they stand for. Slogans and feelgood words don't wash. The accountability comes through providing core services that councils should provide: keep out the rats, keep low the rates and collect the rubbish.

It's very simple.