Welcome to the 4th monthly e-Newsletter for CityWatch NZ
For April 2024, the CityWatch NZ website has been mainly focusing on Hamilton City Council’s Long-Term Plan. Hamilton City Council is aiming to double the rates bills of most households and businesses by 2030 while also doubling its debt to over $ 2.1 billion.
Around New Zealand, many Councils are proposing large and sustained rates increases. Of the country’s major urban areas, Hamilton is being subjected to the largest proposed rates increases.
Table data sourced from these documents and webpages: Auckland Council, Hamilton City Council, Tauranga City Council, Upper Hutt City Council, Hutt City Council, Wellington City Council, Dunedin City Council, Invercargill City Council.
With input from former City Council insiders, CityWatch NZ has prepared a short and general guide for those looking to get involved in their Council’s Long-Term Plan consultation process.
Long-Term Plan consultation guide
The written/online phase of the Hamilton City Council Long-Term Plan consultation had between 2800 and 3000 people giving feedback this month.
“On 21 April, the period for providing written submissions closed. We received over 2800 submissions. Verbal submissions will be heard from 15-17 May. Council will then consider all community feedback.”
Hamilton City Council’s website (Archived 29/04/2024)
The next steps for people in Hamilton City regarding the Long-Term Plan consultation are…
Those opposed to the proposed rates increases and the rapidly growing debt, should sign this “STOP HAMILTON CITY COUNCIL RATE INCREASES” petition and share this petition link widely.
https://www.change.org/p/stop-hamilton-city-council-rate-increases
We note that Council’s questions for the Long-Term Plan consultation did not specifically ask what level of rate increases people find acceptable. This petition is a way of correcting that “oversight” and demonstrate the numbers opposing Council’s financial plans.
A protest is being planned for the last day of the “verbal submissions“ phase of the Long-Term Plan consultation. Gather in Garden Place outside the Hamilton City Council building from 11am to 1pm on Friday the 17th of May 2024. If you oppose rates increases and the massive debt, encourage others to join the protest. Bring extra signs and banners if you can prepare them over the next two weeks. Various local groups will be bring their signs and banners.
Email the Mayor and Councillors and recommend that they read through the public’s consultation comments which can now be viewed on this website. Suggest that if they rely on Council staff to summarise these public comments and then only ready those summaries, they might lose their seat at the next election. At nearly 3000 contributions, reading at least a random selection of a few hundred comments would help a Councillor better understand the views of the wider public. Here is a link to a list of email addresses for Hamilton City Councillors.
Email addresses for Hamilton City Councillors
People in Upper Hutt City are also running their own petition to “Stop the Massive Rates Increase in Upper Hutt City“. With three years of annual increases of ~19% planned, Upper Hutt residents are looking at their rates bills being 94% higher in 2030 compared to this year’s bills.
If you know people in Upper Hutt send them this petition link.
https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-massive-rates-increase-in-upper-hutt-city?
Raised Platforms and Raised Crossings
More signs this month of the tide turning against in-lane bus stops and these newer types of speed hump designs (also called “Wombat crossings“ by their promoters).
“Last month Hamilton City Council slammed the brakes on a number of not-yet contracted roading projects that would have installed more raised platforms and in-lane bus stops across the city after a “tsunami” of push-back from the public.”
Stacey Rangitonga, Firefighters spark up at loathed traffic calming measures, Waikato Times, 16 April 2024
The Waikato Times reported on concerns of fire crews in Hamilton about how the newer speed humps and “traffic calming“ are impacting emergency response times and damaging fire engines. A Waikato Times reporter and Councillor Andrew Bydder are featured in a video going on a fire engine ‘ride-along’ to experience some of Hamilton’s more notorious raised crossings. Hamilton City Council staff gave dismissive responses to the concerns, and these were very similar to the responses from Auckland Transport staff in last month’s NZ Herald and RNZ coverage of Auckland’s issues with “traffic calming” impacting fire engines .
Auckland Transport also appears to be backing away from further installations of raised crossings/platforms according to this article on the 1News website.
“Auckland pedestrians will get flashing ground lights, traffic islands and other road safety measures to replace the heavily criticised raised pedestrian crossings on roads.
Auckland Transport (AT) came under fire for their one-size-fits all approach with the installation of raised pedestrian crossings, deemed to be costing ratepayers too much.
This was despite having a range of other affordable solutions available.
Both Mayor Wayne Brown and Transport Minister Simeon Brown honed in on the costly safety upgrades.
AT customer care engagement manager Phil Wratt said, depending on the situation, the agency would instead use intelligent traffic systems such as flashing inground lights, activated by pedestrians. Driver feedback signs, high friction surfacing, kerb build-outs or central islands would also be options.”
Torika Tokalau, Raised pedestrian crossings ditched in Auckland after criticism, Local Democracy Reporting, 30 April 2024
Hamilton City Council is still pressing ahead with the installation of another raised crossing/platform on Wairere Drive, this time near the busy intersection with Te Rapa Road. Council is making the new supermarket pay for the installation via consent conditions. Information about this project and a guide for objecting to that speed hump installation can be found at the link below.
Opposing the planned raised platform on Wairere Drive at the Karewa Place turnoff
Council Finances
Four further posts have been added to our series of opinion pieces on the serious financial situation faced by Hamilton City Council. These opinion pieces challenge the Council’s narrative that the proposed rates increases are mainly caused by recent external factors. Since 2007, Hamilton City Council has a habit of failing year-after-year to ‘cover everyday costs with everyday revenue’ and achieve their long-predicted operating surpluses. These opinion pieces also identify areas for major cost savings in the Council’s budgets without the need to reduce core service levels. This counters Council’s messaging during consultation which implied that we must choose between large rates increases or major cuts to services.
OPINION: Margaret Evans’ submission on the Hamilton City Long-Term Plan
OPINION: What to keep and what to cut in Hamilton’s Long-Term Plan?
OPINION: Analysis of Hamilton City Council’s financial position
OPINION: Why is Hamilton City Council unable to prepare and promise a financial budget that works?
OPINION: Hamilton City Council’s First Rating Downgrade in a Decade
CityWatch NZ also covered both sides of the controversy about the Mayor’s trip to Belgium, arguably doing a better job of being “accurate, impartial, and balanced” than RNZ.
OPINION: Hamilton Mayor’s ANZAC visit to Belgium
April 2024 By-election for Rangitīkei District Council
Paul Sharland won the councillor seat at the recent Southern Ward By-election by a large margin. Voter turnout was reported by the Manawatu Standard to have increased from the 15% at the 2021 by-election to 24.5% in this April’s by-election.
If there is an upcoming local by-election or local politics event you think CityWatch NZ should be covering, email the details to contact@citywatchnz.org and we will see what we can do.
Upcoming Issues
Over the next few months CityWatch NZ will be focusing on the following issues…
Long-term Plan Consultations and Large Proposed Rates Increases.
Growing Council Debts and Other Issues with Council Finances.
City Council Surveillance Capabilities and the Push for Road Pricing Schemes (Congestion Charges).
Three Waters Reforms.
The Accuracy and Impacts of Climate Change Modeling.
CityWatch NZ has opinion pieces arriving on many of these issues and more are welcome. CityWatch NZ is open to covering many different sides of these issues. If you are interested in volunteering an opinion piece or know of someone who could write a good opinion piece about these issues, email content@citywatchnz.org for more information.
The rest of this e-newsletter is reminders from previous newsletters.
What can you do to help CityWatch NZ?
We need more groups added to our directories of Local Group Contact Details and Issue-based Group Contact Details.
If you know of a local group challenging or engaging with local government or a New Zealand-wide group focused on issues relevant to cities, send them a link to CityWatchNZ.org and ask them to email contact@citywatchnz.org. We will email them back with a template and ask their permission to add their group to the directory.
As the website grows, and especially if we look to creating regional sub-newsletters, we will need the help of volunteers and potentially contractors. If you have an interest or background in editing or creating content and want to help CityWatchNZ grow, email contact@citywatchnz.org with a brief description of your skill set and if you are interested in volunteer work and/or paid contractor work.
CityWatchNZ.org Website and Social Media
CityWatch NZ is running more active investigations on various issues and will be posting more original articles to the website over the next three months.
A number of future explainer articles are being worked on to bring attention to the groups, agendas, policies, and terminology being used to reshape our cities.
We are planning to gradually add more regions to the website, especially those regions with active groups challenging their councils.
We hope to be posting some wins in 2024. We want CityWatch NZ to feature articles and case studies about communities which were successful in resisting or reversing the unwanted changes imposed upon them. These should be more than just brief ‘feel good’ stories and feature details on tactics and approaches which were effective so that people around New Zealand can learn from successful groups and campaigns.
It will be helpful if people share CityWatchNZ.org content on social media. Note that Twitter (X) may not like Substack links. If you have a request for features that would help with sharing content on social media or staying up-to-date with CityWatch NZ content, email your suggestions to feedback@citywatchnz.org and we will see what we can do.
The ‘What is to be Done’ Series of Opinion Pieces
CityWatch NZ is planning to post a series of ‘What is to be Done’ opinion pieces in 2024. The purpose of this series of opinion pieces is to share a wide range of ideas for solving problems with local government and urban development in New Zealand. If you are interested in volunteering an opinion piece or know of someone who could write a good opinion piece about these issues, email content@citywatchnz.org for more information. Given the many issues facing local government, reforms will be needed in the near future. We at CityWatch NZ consider it important that well-informed discussions about the underlying problems and any proposed reforms take place in public.
Substack e-Newsletter
At this stage, the plan is to keep the e-Newsletters as freely available without needing a paid Substack subscription.
We plan to release a monthly e-Newsletter summarising website content on email via Substack. The format might change and we are open to feedback and suggestions to improve the newsletter.
We are planning to create a feature on this Substack, where people can subscribe to a ‘sub-Substack’ email list for a version of the newsletters focused on a specific region or city.
Aside from the monthly e-Newsletters, the Substack email list will be used for informing subscribers of time-critical issues. We will endeavour to send these ‘urgent’ emails sparingly, However, projects being rushed-through with minimal consultation is a normal situation when dealing with local government. This means that rapid responses may be needed on a variety of issues.
The Substack platform also has other features such as polls which could be useful in the future for surveying our readers and collecting views on what issues are most important. We plan to trial some of these features in 2024.