Local councillor Christine Fletcher speaks to a packed church in Mt Eden during a meeting organised by the Character Coalition to discuss proposed development plans for Auckland. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
This is a transcript of Simon Wilson’s weekly newsletter Love this City – exploring the ideas and events, the reality and the potential of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
Mayor Wayne Brown says his colleague Christine Fletcher’s numbers on the new plan for Auckland’s housing zones are “complete rubbish”.
It’s not just Brown’s feelings that are running high.
Emotions were on display by many at a big meeting in a church in Mt Eden on Thursday night where 250 people gathered to discuss the council’s proposed changes on residential zoning (simply: how high buildings can be built in different parts of the city).
Politeness was still the order of the evening. That is, if you don’t count the accusations that it’s “planning by firing squad” and the Government is behaving “like Putin” and has put “a gun to the head” of the city. And if you ignore the shouting.
The meeting was run by Sally Hughes of the Character Coalition, which lobbies to preserve villas and other “character” housing, especially in city-fringe suburbs. Hughes is polite, gently spoken, smiling, and she set the tone.
Suffice for now to note that under Hughes’ guidance there was very strong, but politely expressed opposition to the new density proposals.
If adopted, they will allow 10-storey and 15-storey apartment blocks near the local railway stations, and six-storey blocks along some stretches of arterial roads. And although there are some big carve-outs to preserve the “special character” of parts of Mt Eden and the nearby suburbs, those carve-outs are not as big as they used to be.
“Planning by firing squad” is an expression used by the aforementioned Christine Fletcher to describe the new plan. She wrote an opinion piece about it in the Herald last month, with her colleague Troy Churton, a member of the Ōrākei Local Board.
Churton is the origin of the Putin comparison and the “gun to the head” comment. Government minister Paul Goldsmith, one of two local MPs who was at the meeting, challenged him on both those expressions, but Churton doubled down. At one point, he even cocked his fingers like a gun to the back of Goldsmith’s head.
And then, late in the meeting, a 24-year-old planning student got up at the back and said his home was in one of the special character areas that everyone said should be preserved. But it was a damp, mouldy old flat and the sooner it was knocked down the better. Reuben C, as he introduced himself later, wanted better low-cost housing.
He called out the speakers for defending their generation’s interests at the expense of the city’s desperate need for more housing. And then he referred to Churton as “the bald guy”.
Churton shouted at him. All the speakers were lined up at the front and he stepped forward to yell Cato down, at length.
Quite rare that, to see a platformed speaker bellowing at someone who hasn’t even raised his voice.
There was a lot of real worry among the crowd of 250 people, especially after Fletcher said she had independent advice to show the new plan will require $20-$25 billion of new infrastructure in Mt Eden and Mt Albert alone, and that the city will need to build 56 more primary schools, 23 more secondary schools and 20 new hospitals.
Brown wasn’t at the meeting but he described Fletcher’s numbers to me as “complete rubbish”.
Fletcher’s claims appear to be based on a misunderstanding: that the new plan expects there will be 8 million people living in the city in 30 years’ time. In reality, the council’s medium growth scenario assumes we’ll have around 2.7 million people by then. A million more than now.
This misunderstanding arises because the capacity proposed in the new plans has been confused with supply. Zoning for 2 million homes doesn’t mean there will be 2 million homes. It simply allows developers and other property owners more choice about where new homes will go. It also helps keep a lid on property values.
Council planner Noel Reardon told the meeting the city was building about 10,000 new homes a year. We have 550,000 homes now, so even if we keep adding 10,000 a year, which is quite a stretch, after 30 years we’ll have 850,000.
But if we zoned for only that many, we’d have to tell all property owners exactly what they must do with their land. Imagine the fuss if anyone seriously proposed that. I wrote about this issue last week and don’t imagine that will be the last word on the matter. Stay tuned!
Mayor Brown isn’t letting up on his campaign to persuade the Government to introduce a “bed levy”: a fee per visitor per night, payable by hotels and others offering paid accommodation.
The Government, perhaps wary of “new taxes”, isn’t keen and some observers say the hotel industry isn’t either.
Brown isn’t having that. He knows the biggest hotel owner in Auckland, he said on Thursday. “He’s got 15 hotels and he’s very relaxed about it.”
The money could be put into a fund to entice big events to the city. Rock concerts, global sports contests, State of Origin league, you name it. These days, they’re part of the lifeblood of any successful city.
As a “stopgap”, the council has decided to establish a Major Events Reserve anyway. This will allow its events agency Tātaki Auckland Unlimited to help sports bodies and entertainment promoters bid seriously for big events.
During the debate, for some reason, Brown told councillor Julie Fairey, “Your husband would probably have more of an idea about this.”
“I’ll ask him when he gets home,” she replied.
Councillor Ken Turner, who represents Waitākere, wasn’t keen on the fund, although he agreed to vote for it. “Where I’m from,” he said, “it’s my understanding that most people like going to local events.” The council shouldn’t get too focused on big events that most people aren’t interested in. Fishing contests were popular, he suggested.
Westies, like almost everyone else, might be a little surprised to hear they don’t care about Metallica or a possible return of Taylor Swift and the State of O.
The register of council gifts reveals that in the last financial year Turner accepted six free tickets to concerts by Pink, Coldplay and Luke Combs. There’s video of him on Facebook dancing in the corporate suites.
As reported last week, the council’s Value for Money programme has netted $418 million in savings over the last three years. But that’s not all of it.
The Revenue Committee chaired by deputy mayor Desley Simpson has now reported a further $96m in savings from “recycled assets”, which is what they call the sale of buildings they don’t want anymore. And there’s another $94m in benefits from “improved procurement”, which is what they pay for contracted goods and services. Total: $608m to the good.
Most of the savings were budgeted for but still had to be made. And $44m of the total exceeds the budgeted cuts. Without these savings, Simpson reckons, rates would have been 7% higher in the financial year just finished.
What happens to the saved money? The council’s group financial officer Ross Tucker said on Thursday, “We budget for the targeted savings and rates are set accordingly. When we save more, that retires debt.”
Simpson is clearly very proud of all this. She’s been heading up the Value for Money drive since Phil Goff was mayor, and has had it charged up this term by Wayne Brown.
She says the savings have not resulted in cuts to services, but she has also sounded a warning. “This year we’ve got $87m in savings to find. The low-hanging fruit has gone, the middle-hanging fruit has gone, and next term we’ve got some tough decisions to make.”
How’s the residential patchwork of the city going to change, if the proposed new zones are established? Here’s a table from the council planners, showing the number of each type of property that exists today, under three zoning plans: the Auckland Unitary Plan (AUP, Plan Change 78 (PC78) and the draft new plan.
Residential zoning in Auckland: 3 plans
The AUP was adopted in 2016, allowing for 900,000 dwellings over the next 30 years. Today there are about 550,000. For technical reasons, the table shows a slightly smaller number: 528,778.
The last Government required the 900,000 target to rise to 2 million, over 30 years, and introduced the Medium Density Residential Standards to enable this. The MDRS basically enabled most properties to be divided in three, and for three-storey dwellings on those sites. In line with this, Auckland Council drew up PC78.
Neither the 900,000 nor the 2 million figures mean those houses will all be built. The plans that include them indicate where denser development can happen. (See “Mt Eden and ‘planning by firing squad’” in this newsletter.)
The current Government has allowed the council to opt out of PC78, but only if it produces a new plan that allows for the same growth. The new plan now causing so much debate is the council’s response to that.
This table shows how the existing residential properties in Auckland have been allocated to each zone, under each plan.
Three things to note. First, “properties” doesn’t mean dwellings: a single property could have an apartment block on it.
Second, the Auckland Light Rail Corridor was not covered in PC78, because the exact route had not been determined, so the total number of properties is lower.
And third, in urban parts of the city, many properties zoned single-house under the AUP were proposed for rezoning under PC78 as low-density residential. This effectively meant they had a “special character” overlay, often because of their historic value as villas. Therefore, to compare PC78 with the other plans, the single-house zone and low-density residential zone should be read together.
Rail commuters may have noticed already: KiwiRail has come up with a better way of managing graffiti than removing it or abandoning the network to it. Art.
Murals are appearing on half a dozen sites along the rail network and, to date, none has been retagged. There’s a joint commitment with Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail to ringfence the funding, so the project is ongoing.
In Manukau and Papatoetoe, the designs of John Apelu Crouch draw on the local landscape and the origins of the suburbs’ names. He’s into birds.
On the Parnell bridge, Jonny 4Higher has presented native plants, the Auckland skyline, Rangitoto and a multicultural blend of patterns.
Nearby, Joel Nicholls has lined up 28 pop-art native birds.
At Sturges Rd in Henderson, Lucia Laubscher has celebrated native flora and fauna and also worked in some safety messages No Trespassers, y’all.
Ross Liew and Margarita Vovna have featured flowers native to Aotearoa, the Pacific and Asia in their work in Ōtāhuhu.
And nearby in Quay Park, young Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei artists Caine Taihuia and Uira Nahi have been strutting their stuff.
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