Welcome to the 2nd monthly e-Newsletter for CityWatch NZ
In February 2024, the CityWatch NZ website has largely been publishing on the Wellington City and Hamilton City by-elections along with addressing “Traffic calming“ issues such as raised platforms on major roads.
There are promising signs that opposition to the “raised safety platforms“, speed humps, and other “traffic calming“ measures is delivering results. According to NZTA (Waka Kotahi), New Zealand’s first “raised safety platform“-type speed hump was installed in Hamilton City back in 2019. In the 4-5 years since then, a great many of these “raised platforms” have been installed in Hamilton City along with other towns and cities around New Zealand. There has been little official acknowledgement of the potential negative impacts or disadvantages of installing these “raised safety platforms“ and other “traffic calming“ measures. This is one of the major issues that CityWatch NZ was created to address through providing quality information and informing a more balanced discussion. Towards those aims, CityWatch NZ published a long ‘explainer’ article in February, titled…
What are the disadvantages and negative impacts of “traffic calming”?
…then addressed related accusations and denials from a Hamilton City Councillor…
CityWatch NZ responds to accusations from a Hamilton City Councillor
Towards the end of February, CityWatch NZ was informed that a sizable group of Hamilton City councillors, is putting forth a Notice of Revocation on Hamilton transport projects, to stop a set of transport “upgrade“ projects. These expensive “upgrade“ projects feature plans to remove car parks, install the unpopular in-lane bus stops, and build more “raised safety platforms“.
Opposition to road changes such as in-lane bus stops was also a major issue in the Hamilton East Ward By-election, with the overwhelming majority of candidates opposing the new fashion in frustrating bus stop design.
In Auckland, they have removed a “raised safety platform” this year. NZ Herald reporter, Bernard Orsman, wrote a series of articles on the issues and cost of this raised crossing and its recent removal. CityWatchNZ has posted a summary of this series of articles (as well as linking to other relevant articles from the same reporter)…
NZ Herald articles: Removal of the Three Kings raised pedestrian crossing in Auckland
February 2024 By-elections
Two by-elections for city councillor seats took place in February 2024 in Hamilton City and Wellington City.
Wellington City Council: The official result for the Pukehīnau/Lambton General Ward by-election was the election of Geordie Rogers with 4,147 votes, narrowly ahead of Karl Tiefenbacher with 4,102 votes. Election results can be seen at this link.
Hamilton City Council: The official result for the East General Ward by-election was the election of Tim Macindoe with 5,874 votes, ahead of Leo Liu with 2,208 votes. Election results can be seen at this link.
After requesting opinion pieces from all contactable candidates in both by-elections, CityWatch NZ received and published four candidate opinion pieces in the lead up to the by-elections.
CANDIDATE OPINION: Tim Macindoe
CANDIDATE OPINION: John McDonald
CANDIDATE OPINION: Roger Stratford
CityWatch NZ also hosted information pages for each by-election, which provided links and details for various ‘meet the candidate’ events…
Wellington Pukehῑnau/Lambton Ward By-election 2024
Hamilton East Ward 2024 By-election
April 2024 By-election for Rangitīkei District Council
We have been asked to cover the Southern Ward By-election for a councillor seat on the Rangitīkei District Council, so a Rangitīkei District Council Southern Ward By-election 2024 page has now been created.
We cannot commit to fully covering every local body by-election. However, with the assistance of locals emailing us details and keeping us informed we can post election details on CityWatch NZ, make people aware of events, and host candidate opinion pieces.
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 CityWatchNZ will be focusing on the following issues (in addition to the issues we are already covering):
Long-term Plan Consultations.
Large Proposed Rates Increases.
Growing Council Debts and Other Issues with Council Finances.
City Council Surveillance Capabilities.
Three Waters Reforms.
Hamilton’s Proposed Water Meters.
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 first opinion piece on Water Meters has now been posted on CityWatch NZ…
OPINION: Water Meters in Hamilton City
The rest of this e-newsletter is reminders from the January 2024 newsletter.
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.
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.
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.