OPINION: Our city is a wonderful place. We’ve more than turned a corner since the earthquakes and as we’ve seen in the media recently, people are flocking here.
Like all cities, we’re also a complex place. We’ve got over two thousand kilometres each of roads, drinking water mains and sub mains as well as wastewater pipes and treatment plants serving the urban city and wider Banks Peninsula. We’ve got an extensive network of streams, drains, pipes, basins and rivers that carry our stormwater out in rain events. We’ve got waste transfer stations, a recycling depot and an organics plant.
These are ‘the basics’ that enable us to get around and stop us getting sick with so many people living in one place. If they’re poorly maintained, it causes issues for residents and higher reactive maintenance costs; making sure that we repair and renew efficiently is important. This is why I put forward amendments to the Long-Term Plan this year, which would reduce the current 27 per cent leakage rate in our pipes down to 15 per cent in the next 10 years - and why I proposed increasing our investment to minimise the resulting repair costs.
We’ve been kicking the can down the road on our roads and pipes for too long and it’s costing us both in additional reactive maintenance and increased debt and interest. We need to be prepared to talk constructively about long-term solutions that are financially prudent now.
We’ve also got assets that aren’t quite so straightforward – community facilities like libraries, pools, community centres and many halls for gatherings or recreation. We’ve got parks and playgrounds, sports fields, changing rooms, skateparks and a stadium. We’ve got an art gallery, a convention centre, town hall and performance spaces. There are also car parking buildings, jetties and wharves, a museum and various heritage buildings. It’s a lot! It’s also mostly newish or restored post-quake and there’s very little left to add or fill in the gaps left to do.
While each of us may only use the facilities in our own neighbourhood, we know how important they are to each of us across the fabric of our wider city. I don’t know about you, but I only use a small number of these in any year. I’ve never been to Bishopdale Library, walked in Petrie Park or had fun at the Knights Stream skatepark – but I know that many people do and would miss them if they were gone or poorly maintained.
These are the things that make a city worth living in. They also create a more equitable city. While some people can afford large sections and lush gardens, their own pool or artworks, to buy lots of books for their children, most people simply don’t have that option.
Closing one small library in Aranui or Redwood might not seem like a big deal when you look at the city as a whole, but for many locals it means no access at all, as transport costs or time can make travel to another library prohibitive.
When we all pitch in a small amount for each of these facilities we get more and better access than any of us can have alone.
And so we get to the Minister for Local Government’s latest proclamation that councils should get ‘back to basics’ and that the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of our communities is not our core role. He’s concerned about duplication, which is fair enough, but I don’t see the government building playgrounds or planting trees in our parks. I don’t see the government providing meeting places for community groups or making sure kids get access to books in their early years to set them up for lifelong learning.
The minister is rightly concerned about recent rates increases – and he’s not alone. Around the council table we are all acutely aware that it’s tough for residents at the moment and we have tried to keep increases to what’s necessary to keep the city ticking while not slashing services that make residents' lives easier. However, the key drivers of rates increases this year were inflation, insurance, interest rates and the stadium; not the things that Minister Brown mentions in his press release. We’ve also just found out that we’ll likely have to add 0.28 per cent next year to cover the costs of the Government's new water regulator Taumata Arowai and there is other legislation on the way that will require resourcing for us to implement too.
But there’s a cost to cuts as well. Investing in our communities’ well-being saves us money in the long term. As we’ve seen with recent floods and fires, the costs of not looking after our environment is more money poured into response and clean up, not just once, but increasingly over time. Short-term cuts to pools and other recreation and exercise spaces lead to increased costs to our health system and cuts to libraries or the arts lead to a population that is less creative and innovation in our economy suffers.
In ‘Share an Idea’ residents dreamed of a better city, not a basic one. A city fit for a changing and challenging future, one that focused on people and green spaces and easier ways to get around. We can achieve this when we acknowledge that others may have different priorities to our own and we work collectively to make decisions not just for today, but for the long-term future of Ōtautahi Christchurch and future generations.
This Government campaigned on localism and on enabling communities to have more say on what their council does, not less. Let’s hold them to that promise.
