Denise L'Estrange-Corbet: Local council? I don't rate them

Auckland Mayor Len Brown. Photo / NZ Herald

Opinion

Black and white is good. I like black and white, that is what I work in.

This year, Auckland Council and I collided spectacularly and I realised they work only in one colour: Grey. It varies in shades, grey with a hint of blank. If you challenge blank, you get blank with a bit more blank.

Challenge that, and you get Simpson Grierson. Challenge that, back to blank.

My collision with the council came after it misled me for five years, increasing my CV each year up to this year and charging rates on this amount, when the building had been given a Category A heritage listing that dropped its value significantly. When I pointed it out, they said it was bad luck. We shall be going to court next year.

I do not envy Len, as you need a great and competent team behind you, and he is leading a council in need of a rigorous colonic, to get rid of the waste matter that sucks up our dollars, clogs the wheels and delivers very little.

I want council employees, paid by the ratepayers, to be au fait with the areas they specialise in, and not to run off to a law firm when it gets too hot, and spend thousands more ratepayers' dollars unnecessarily.

If Mickey flaming Mouse was mayor, and he could run the city well, he would get my vote.

I want a council that runs the city I was born in effectively and efficiently, with honesty and reliability. I want a mayor that leads that charge, a great figurehead, one we are proud of. Auckland is growing at a rapid pace, ethnically, environmentally, in population and internationalism.

I want a city that I am proud to live in, and want to live in, that is ahead of its competitors by a mile. I want my council run like any good New Zealand business, with growth, vision, profit, and which gives back to society, and does not suck the living daylights out of it.