Local democracy for Mahurangi…
would be a local board, meeting monthly in the Warkworth Town Hall
stv-elect first Mayor of Mahurangi
Vote early and often to elect the first mayor of Mahurangi. Of course, only the latest vote an individual casts will count. Because somebody votes early, they shouldn’t later be penalised when some late-breaking information causes them to revise their preferences…
Holy grails and silver bullets and day-and-half to vote
It’s long since time to jettison the obligatory if-we-don’t-act-on-climate-within-so-many-years exhortation. The truth is that, since 1988, when not only Dr James Hansen but Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called for climate action, it has never been certain…
Nominate someone as 2020 Mayor of Mahurangi
Mayors, to be legitimate, need to be elected by preference voting—known as stv in Aotearoa, and as rcv in the United States, where Barry resided until retiring to his country of birth. The need for a useful demonstration of stv to appropriately mark…
stv-electing first Mayor of Mahurangi
Some dots can take longer to connect. And the more obvious the dot, the longer it seems to take for it to be connected. Since the announcement of the terms of reference of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, the Mahurangi Magazine has…
stv bicentennial extraordinary town-hall talk
Ideally, the bicentennial of stv should be held where the Birmingham Society for Literary and Scientific Improvement held the world’s first election with it. But even if that ultimate location was the epicentre of a global celebration, two other, antipodean, countries…
Crude reminder of royally half-cocked commission
First-past-the-post, 200 years after the first single transferable vote election, deserves to be a very distant memory. But, thanks to the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance stvsingle-transferable-vote-ignoramuses, the region is about to elect its fourth mayor with the…
Seriously serial structure plan submission
There is much to applaud and support in Warkworth’s draft structure plan. Submissions are invited, as is statutorily required, prior to the final stages, labelled “Changes to Structure Plan and Adoption” or, as the text explains, “Following consultation…
Time for town hall to take it to city hall
Warkworth Town Hall, inescapably, is where the community should assemble to make decisions for itself. Not the Auckland Town Hall, with its region-wide responsibilities for a city of 1.7 million. In a slightly less imperfect world, Mahurangi…
Topic-paper feedback closes – Keep calm and carry on
Mahurangi Action has frantically prepared feedback to enable members, and other readers of the Mahurangi Magazine, to quickly email a comprehensive submission to Auckland Council. This is a work in progress, but the target was to…
Now the commission wants to explore
At least Ōrewa is equally inconvenient for all Rodney residents. In its case for twin local board areas, the Mahurangi Magazine pointed out: So disparate are the areas, that meetings of the Rodney Local Board are held in Ōrewa, which is in neither half. Now…
Region survives serial secessionism
Serial attempts to turn the clock back six decades have failed, and deservedly. For without regional governance, Aucklanders would be much the poorer, for example, 27 sublime regional parks poorer. It would also lack a cohesive planning mechanism to cope with…
Twin tweaks to conquer local-democracy deficit
Status quo would be the less satisfactory option. Corner to corner, the Rodney Local Board area stretches 86 kilometres—a 165-kilometre, 2-hour drive by road, plus at least an hour’s walk at either end. In the context of an area of nearly 87 000 hectares, local board is an…
Town hall planning to return favour
By 2019, many of the decisions about the new Warkworth could be being made in its old town hall. The Local Government Commission is currently considering reorganisation options for the Auckland region, including an alternative proposal made by…
Representing hundreds and thousands
On average, each of Auckland region’s part-time local board politicians represents 9500 people. But a report prepared for Auckland Council argues for the number of local boards and local board members to be halved, which would double the number each…
Heart-shaped ballot boxes and Kombi combo fails to fire
Tessa Berger is quoted, but not by name. In his New Zealand Herald column Political Roundup, Dr Bryce Edwards names neither Tessa, nor the national Kids Voting programme she champions. Dr Edwards suggests local government is headed towards an…
Only council candidate to score straight-a pluses
Warkworth from 4000 to 20 000 by 2040. That would be a five-fold increase in less than half the 50 years it took the region to treble to today’s population, of about 1.5 million. With this planned growth-rate of more than three times the regional average…
Penny Webster is good – reports the War for Auckland
Penny Webster is good. She’s been a keen advocate for old people who don’t like apartments leaving the centre of Auckland, which is one of the key values of our War effort. Besides that, she’s handled a key finance role for the last three years [and the…
Berger tops list thanks to National ideology
Tessa Berger’s bonanza of national media coverage began locally. It began with the Rodney Times sending out its excellent reporter Jay Boreham to interview Tessa in respect to her eye-catching billboards, one of which by then had been removed…
Polling patch-up for flawed first-past-the-post
Polling gets blamed for a lot of things. For starters, for influencing folk into voting for the winning side. Or, conversely, for influencing folk into voting for the underdog. Whereas, in an ideal world, voters would express their honestly held preference…
Bugger evidence-based policymaking – buy a Kombi
After three decades of Kids Voting, there is ample evidence to back it up. And for half that time, after it was imported from the United States by the then Auckland City Council, kids in Aotearoa have been at it. This year, a record 11 730 students in the…
First-past-the-post dictates one tick
Voters, reasonably, seek to get their money’s worth. But thanks to obdurate royal commissioners, Auckland Council remains stuck in the bad old days of first-past-the-post, and voters are about to be short-changed. This is manifestly evident in the crowded, 18-strong…
Car-free Te Muri with coastal trail no mirage
The indications were entirely auspicious, even before the wrap-up. Then the commissioners, who had just finished hearing submissions on the future development of Te Muri, outlined the points they expected Auckland Council’s planning officers…
Tessa Berger’s snazzy billboards
Although sick was more likely word for a millennial to use, snazzy was the immediate reaction of one of Tessa Berger’s strongest local supporters, and, no doubt, that the majority of the Mahurangi Magazine’s demographic. “You will certainly add a…
Magazine receives boost from Berger board bid
Mahurangi ‘bulletins’ had been getting progressively more ambitious, climaxing, in January 2007, with the first, glossy magazine format, Mahurangi Magazine. The proximate spur was the need to fill the void left when the Mahurangi Cruising…
Exactly two weeks to enrol those elusive 18–29-year-olds
In 2013, Len Brown was elected by a mere 16.5% of Aucklanders registered to vote. This was the result of an abysmal 35% turnout, and marginal popularity combined with the inevitable consequences of first-past-the-post. Dazed and disillusioned…
Mahurangi Action application for a Tamahunga Local Board
Mahurangi Action Incorporated hereby applies to the Local Government Commission for the single local board within the Rodney Ward of Auckland Council to be replaced by two local boards: a northern local board that conforms with the present…
Mahurangi Action to submit to building a better region
The royal commissioners had recommended list members. List councillors, really; ten of Auckland’s 23 councillors, the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance proposed, were to be elected to supposedly represent the whole region, rather than…
Garnering major help to connect this coast
You read it there first, in a full-page spread in Junction Magazine, profiling ‘uber-human’ Tessa Berger, the 21-year-old chair of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail Trust. Anyone reading the glossy Matakana-based magazine’s description of Tessa’s achievements…
Humbled by 2010–2013 Rodney Local Board
Before the meeting began, one of the local board members offered up a prayer: that the meeting might close by 5 pm. Service as a local body representative is famously thankless work. The work has been doubly thankless for the inaugural…
Mahurangi Magazine’s draft plan submission
With one very specific exception, which is addressed in the next section, the Mahurangi Magazine generally supports the content of the draft Rodney Local Board Plan. This submission’s priority, however, is to emphasise just six draft plan items…
First challenge is deciding what is a priority
The draft Rodney Local Board Plan submission form begins with: “I agree with the following priorities proposed in the draft local board plan” The difficulty is that, in the draft plan, seven priorities are listed. The first listed, for example, is: Priority…
Submissions on draft plan: Start with the positive
It’s not that it’s a bad plan. That notwithstanding, most comments on the draft local board plan will be negative simply because it is human nature for folk to react strongly to things they disagree with. So it could be argued that by asking citizens…
Aside from mad motorway a reasonable plan
The draft local board plan is mostly Mahurangi-friendly. Mahurangi is mentioned six times, and the Mahurangi Action Plan twice. Even Mahurangi River dredging gets mentioned, which is right and proper considering how well canvassed…
District council desperate bid for self-preservation
Essentially Auckland Regional Council media release 26 May 2010 Rodney District Council is currently calling for submissions on a private member’s bill to become a unitary authority, even though the bill is struggling to find a parliamentary sponsor. Previous...
Need to respond
Letter It would be bad news indeed for the Mahurangi and it’s action plan if Mahurangi became part of the cash-strapped Kaipara District. I think we need to respond to Mike Lee’s call and make submissions urgently. Editor’s note This being the second...
Thirty into 1.4 million equals one Tamahunga local board
It was an unimaginable scenario in 2007, when the Labour-led government determined it was time to fix Auckland. That in 2009, a National-led government, and Act Party minister of local government, would be remedying royal commission…
Conspiracy theories also opiate at local level
She writes refreshingly rationally. Titled Conspiracy as the Opium of the People, columnist Tracey Barnett warns: We’re fostering a world where the truth can be picked out of a hat. Arabs, Jews or Americans themselves felled the Twin Towers, depending on whether you...
Thank you the fabulously appreciated four hundred and eighty-five
Membership of Mahurangi Action once reached 330. That was on the back of the launch of Jade River : A History of the Mahurangi. Since then it has slipped back to around half that figure, where it has been, more or less, for much of the group’s existence. The...
Distinctly dispiriting campaign climate
I last stood for council 33 years ago. A candidate for the Hibiscus Coast District Community Council, I came, I was want to say, dangerously close to being elected. Not dangerous in the sense that I was too young, more that I was never comfortable with the adversarial...
Today we meet Ms Morresey at Ransom Wines
The editor is looking forward to it. A gathering with prospects for more human and meaningful exchanges—after two ‘meet the candidates’ meetings, with several more to come. Purposeful, positive, discussion one-on-one or in small groups in…
Heading off a conflict of interest
My first action was to seek advice. I was considering standing for Rodney District Council, and sought the counsel of Graham Nielson who was my supervisor when I was employed by the council to computer-model Helensville’s water reticulation—the good old days when the...