KEY POINTS:
The mayors of Rodney and North Shore have slammed Auckland City Council's idea of a single super city governed by a 26-member Greater Auckland Council, including an elected lord mayor.
The proposal, outlined yesterday, is the first draft of a submission to the Royal Commission of Inquiry on
Auckland Governance.
North Shore City mayor Andrew Williams labelled it an Auckland City "land grab" to remove the Auckland Regional Council.
"It's not in the interests of the region to work in that manner. I feel they should be apologising to the region for this paper that they've put out," Mr Williams said.
He said many Auckland City councillors did not agree with the proposal and it was a "total nonsense".
"Clearly this has been written by someone in the inner-sanctum of the Auckland City Council and some of the bureaucrats there are trying to create a powerhouse there at upper Queen St," Mr Williams said.
He said North Shore City believed an enhanced regional council was needed and his council would be working cooperatively with others to bring about change.
"We don't favour this business of a lord mayor as a super, super head of the region. That might be how they see it in upper Queen St but we see it as totally undemocratic and it undermines the whole idea of democracy," Mr Williams said.
He said the people who wrote the document needed to be "taken to task" and North Shore City would be shooting the idea "down in flames".
Rodney District Council mayor Penny Webster was also scathing of the paper.
"The idea of beefed up community boards wouldn't work for us," Mrs Webster said.
She said she supported the disbanding of the ARC to be replaced by an environment protection agency to look after regional infrastructure.
"It wouldn't deal with land-use planning. The ARC has got itself very involved in land-use planning and we spend a lot of our time defending our decisions in court against the ARC and that's not good for our ratepayers," Mrs Webster said.
When asked if land-use planning and region-wide infrastructure went hand-in-hand, Mrs Webster said: "It shouldn't be". She said planning was getting in the way of "development".
Mrs Webster said the debate had opened up questions about where people saw Rodney and Franklin in the Auckland region.
"It makes us realise that we don't belong in Auckland," Mrs Webster said.
