Viewpoint – Managing growth

The biggest factor facing the Auckland Council and Rodney is growth. Auckland’s population in the 2014-2015 year grew by 43,500. We have had an extra 200,000 in the past five years. This does have a positive side as there are 405 employment opportunities created each week. The down side is dealing with that growth.

Council has projected up to a $1.8B in capital spending to deal with not just the growth but with catching up on the underspend of the past. Roads, water and wastewater, storm water these are all big numbers. Council is making savings of up to $200 million a year with an aspirational target of $260m year-on-year and in spite of the rhetoric, staff numbers are three per cent less now than all the previous eight Councils. In fact, finding and retaining staff in areas such as building consents proves a real challenge as many builders I have spoken to contest. Tauranga, Christchurch and Wellington pay $25K more than Auckland and living is cheaper.

Investment continues to come to the region and at the recent Tripartite economic summit in Auckland, between Los Angeles and Guangzhou, 700 business people from the three cities met to talk about working together with many deals being done between firms on a wide range of topics such as film, food innovation and tourism. Many were here for the first time and were delighted with what Auckland had to offer even visiting Matakana which they raved about. For Rodney, there is the ability to leverage off this growth to get more investment in infrastructure. We need to focus on the big picture which is sometimes difficult when the day-to-day matters are top of mind.

Council is also looking at renewing Facilities and Maintenance Contracts. This has been an issue with many of our communities in Rodney as the centralisation of halls, parks and public toilets (of which we have 900+) has meant cleaning and maintenance is often not up to scratch. There are a great many opportunities for improvement while driving down costs and allowing a more flexible regime.  Especially in the area of cross over between Auckland Council parks department and Auckland Transport in the road corridor, the cause of much frustration to the public and councillors alike.

Finally, we are looking forward to an announcement of the contract to build the Puhoi to Warkworth motorway and ‘yes’ this will include the Matakana Link road. The battle then will be to get the link road formed early so that it becomes a construction road for the motorway to relieve the Hill St intersection.