CCC must rejoin LGNZ

I’m not sure why a small majority of the Mayor and Councillors experienced a brain drain and decided to leave Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) last year. When in office I played an active role in that organisation as has most Christchurch Mayors. We achieved a lot for our city by being involved with others.

It’s time to move on from the past show of petulance and rejoin LGNZ so that we can participate with all other Councils to face a government which has proven to be pretty hostile towards the sector.

Here is an article on a proposal from the government which because CCC isn’t in the LGNZ tent they sit on the side of the discussions Bishop to announce levies system for infrastructure growth | The Post. There are huge ramifications for CCC’s finances in this proposal and our city must be part of the discussion. It might be a good, or bad, proposal for us.

In the Kaka on Saturday one correspondent wrote:

Bishops latest “strategy” for funding urban expansion just shows his utter lack of understanding of the entire dynamic around urban growth. The real issue is that land bankers are getting windfall gains from zoning changes – the people who should be paying for infrastructure are the ones who own vacant land on city boundaries – they should have to fund the incremental cost of increasing capacity in roads sewer power and water supply etc – most of the value of land on the urban periphery comes form the ability to connect to infrastructure.

Land without these services is virtually valueless. Perhaps it is time that NZ introduced some form of shareholding in publicly owned networks such that if someone wants to build a new home on unserviced land they have to purchase a “share” of the existing capital value of the urban networks they wish to connect to.

One interesting consequence of this is that it might suddenly occur to people that it may be cheaper in many cases to be at least partly self-sufficient or self-contained – why not rain water tanks on site sewage treatment (or electric or composting toilets) and solar panels. Bishops latest ramblings on this topic just show that he has a lot of dogma informing in his thought processes and not much original thought.

and beyond that not even a brief mention as to whether all of this population growth is worth the cost let alone a sane discussion of government’s population policies.

Because CCC is sitting outside LGNZ please, some thoughtful Councillor, put it back on the agenda that CCC rejoin LGNZ. Then we can, as a City, participate with other Councils in debates like this with a government which isn’t naturally on our side.