Welcome to the 1st monthly e-Newsletter for CityWatch NZ
After many months of work, the CityWatch NZ website was launched in mid-December 2023 with the purpose of raising awareness and providing useful information for addressing the issues currently impacting New Zealand’s cities.
Thanks to all those who have helped with getting the website ready and distributing pamphlets . Thank you to everyone sharing information about the website and related issues with their communities.
Next Step: By-elections in February 2024
As a consequence of the 2023 General Election, we have two by-elections for city council seats in February 2024…
Wellington City Council: By-election for the Pukehīnau/Lambton General Ward with voting opening on the Friday 26 January 2024 and closing at noon on Saturday 17 February 2024.
Hamilton City Council: By-election for the East General Ward with voting opening on the Friday 26 January 2024 and closing at noon on Saturday 17 February 2024.
CityWatch NZ has requested opinion pieces all contactable candidates in both by-elections and will be posting these to the Website in the 1st Week of February.
CityWatch NZ has pages for each By-election.
https://www.citywatchnz.org/wellington-pukeh%e1%bf%91nau-lambton-ward-by-election-2024/
https://www.citywatchnz.org/hamilton-east-ward-2024-by-election/
Next Step: Long-term Plan Consultations and Three Waters Reforms
Many councils around New Zealand are planning to run the public consultation process for their Long-term Plan documents in the first half of 2024. CityWatch NZ will be informing and encouraging people to be involved with these Long-term Plan consultations.
The unpopular Three Waters reforms are not completely dead and may come back in the form of revived (zombie?), corporate entities. The Newsroom website also claims to have a letter from Simeon Brown, the Minister of Local Government, “…telling mayors he’ll relax consultation and audit requirements so they can lock in their long-term rates and spending plans” linking this with the repeal of Labour’s Three Waters reforms. These are concerning developments that we will watch closely in early 2024 as details emerge.
Next Step: 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.
Next Step: 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.
Next Step: 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.
List of December 2023 Content
The major articles posted in the 1st month of the website are listed below.
Explainer articles:
Posts that were mainly related to Hamilton City issues:
Opposing NZTA’s installation of “Raised Safety Platforms” on State Highway 1C in Hamilton
Shaw’s Bird Park, the road, and the Council: A bureaucratic nightmare in Hamilton
Posts highlighting and summarising news and opinion from other sources:
Stuff Article: Why are councils considering rates hikes of 25.5% and higher?
Newsroom Article: Three Waters repeal forces councils to hike rates by a third
RNZ Article: Waka Kotahi puts funding for cycling, walking and public transport initiatives on hold
Opinion article in The Spinoff: Let’s Get Wellington Moving was a giant waste of time
Three RCR interviews with New Plymouth District Councillor Murray Chong