The Low Rate Diet

WHO Douglas Armstrong WHAT Chair of Auckland City's finance committee WHERE The Chocolate Cake Company WHY Because everyone wants a fair slice for their rates
Reader, I can report Doug Armstrong is a spry 66-year-old. He made a dash from the Auckland City Council headquarters in Greys Ave to The Chocolate Cake Company in Elliott St in just over four minutes.
At the arranged place, at the arranged time, there'd been no sign of him. I phoned him and he answered cheerily. Then his voice shifted to realization and astonishment: "Oh, my goodness! I'm meeting you, aren't I?"
On arrival, his grey hair is standing on end and he ducks off to the gents while I get his flat white coffee and obligatory chocolate cake.
Douglas Armstrong, QSO, is chairman of Auckland City's finance committee. He will oversee a frugal regime in the next couple of years that will cut back community services to bring rate rises close to the rate of inflation.
Given the delayed start, we quickly get down to hard questions. Talk of some of the projects and services to be axed is already circulating and Doug isn't denying any of it.
"There will be all sorts of people complaining when we go into the budget," he grimaces. "People's expectations have been built up and we won't be able to deliver on that.
"It was always going to be a hard task, but it's been made easier by the economic circumstances now. The argument for being frugal is far more compelling than it was. The overriding imperative is that people are going to struggle to pay their rates. If we're not careful, we can end up making life harder for people.
"We're going to see a lot of people in extreme difficulty."
We pause to drink our coffees.
"This is lovely cake," he says. "Isn't your photographer having some?" Doug has impeccable manners. He was an Auckland Grammar School lad from Kohimarama who was drawn to mathematics and had an affection for engineering. He turned to teaching at Auckland Technical Institute when consultancy work was tight and rose in academic administration to be chief executive of Unitec when he retired in 1999.
Home has been Karaka Bay for 32 years. Doug's personal escape is a restored tugboat which he steers out to his beach house on Rakino Island as often as he can manage. He does his best thinking on the boat, he says, and while mowing the lawns.
Doug believes that too few local councils spend enough of their time thinking. "Some people regard local authority roles as full-time employment," he says.
"I'm not one of those."
It is easy to get pulled in, he concedes, and lose sight of the overall vision.
"There's almost a tyranny of paperwork. You're reading the equivalent of War & Peace every week. With the amount of processes that have to be adhered to in the Local Government Act and the Resource Management Act and what have you, it's at the expense of quality decisions."
He deftly dissects a neat piece of cake with his teaspoon and I ask him about his success in council so far. "One of my prouder achievements is that I championed the resanding of Kohimarama Beach and St Heliers Bay," he says, licking icing from the side of his mouth.
I point out that the resanding project was marred somewhat by the accidental burying of the St Heliers Bay boat ramp, which remains interred to this day. He's unrepentant.
"The boat ramp was a detail that was lost in the big picture. We've got a stunning beach from what was pretty tatty."
And frustrations in council thus far? Doug was frustrated by Dick Hubbard's term at Auckland City.
"I felt we wandered off to solving the world's problems. I felt we crossed the divide and ended up debating the anti-smacking bill rather than debating congestion and the other problems facing the city. And that council didn't keep an eye on what everything was going to cost in the way of rates."
Doug's had distinguished careers in engineering, academia, administration and politics. But he still considers himself an engineer who loves mechanics.
"I think it's quite good training for anything. You've got to learn to analyse and synthesise a problem before solving it.
"It's got to work in the end." The mechanics of steering the city's finances is now in Doug's hands as he works through the spreadsheets to create a 10-year financial stencil. How does he feel about saying no to so many people?
"I personally sympathise with them." He stares down at his empty coffee cup and the remnants of the cake. "But there's the overriding imperative of the affordabilty of rates."