My Account
Moves by three rural community groups to get the Rodney Local Board electoral subdivisions reviewed by Auckland Council next year received support from board members last month.
A motion to acknowledge a request by the Northern Action Group, Rodney Community Voices and the Landowners and Contractors Association for a boundary review, and to support the Joint Governance Working Party review process was narrowly passed by five votes to three, with one abstention.
Michelle Carmichael raised the matter as an extraordinary item at the board’s November 29 meeting, saying the groups were asking members to acknowledge their proposal to alter subdivision boundaries to what they see as fairer representation for rural residents.
“We’re not voting on what the outcomes are, just saying there are community concerns out there and we support the proposal to look at potential changes,” she said. “As a resident in the past I could see that there was difficulty sometimes with fair representation between the rural and urban requirements.”
Ivan Wagstaff stressed that the motion was not supporting the actual proposed changes, just the process itself.
“The goal of the review is to look at whether it’s unfair. We’re just supporting what the governance working party is doing and engaging with the process,” he said.
Chair Brent Bailey didn’t mince his words when voicing his concerns that it might be seen as predetermination.
“It sort of says we’d be siding with a bunch of noisy people from north Rodney who have a track record for fighting City Hall, so I can’t and I won’t,” he said.
Carmichael said she was happy to represent the ‘noisy north’.
“We need to be able to look at things. The process does include consultation. This is democracy and we need to represent the people who’ve elected us,” she said.
