Crystal Beavis and Mike Keir, Waikato District Council.
Time flies, I am coming up to two years as a first term councillor and it has been an interesting and enlightening experience. On one hand I have been very impressed by the many volunteers who give their time through community committees, hall committees and other organisations that selflessly work hard to aid and benefit their communities. Also many council staff are there for the right reasons and try to provide a quality community service.
Mike Keir
On the other hand is a system that is highly bureaucratic, regulated and constrained by planning processes, many mandated by central government. It does not have to be this way. Tokyo, a highly functioning city of over 37 million is not overly constrained by restrictive planning regulations.
Local government often complains of being treated poorly by central government. Why? An interesting example of central government frustration is their current initiative to provide some cheaper housing options through the “granny flat” proposal. This would allow landowners to install a self-contained building of up to 60 square metres on properties with minimal consenting requirements.
It is a good initiative. We need to do something to stem the flow of our young people disappearing over the horizon as the opportunity of owning their own home in this country does the same (unless they have wealthy parents).
However, instead of seeing this as an opportunity, local government sees it as a problem. People cannot be trusted to build a self-contained building that has a kitchen and bathroom. The result will be new slums of substandard housing with all manner of problems. Landowners are greedy exploiters! So we will regulate these buildings to the point where they are unaffordable.
Yes, there will be some who will build rubbish, but most will try to build something decent, and any house is better than living in a car, and if you take the shackles off it allows people to innovate, be creative and that is where the magic happens. Young people often have great ideas, give them the opportunity to try some out and even if they don’t work, they will have learnt something.
Councils do not have to be responsible for everything. If people want to put an unconsented building on their property let them, but also ensure they take responsibility for that building. Make sure it is put on the LIM or PIM so that any future prospective buyer is aware. End of story.
We try to cover all risks and all we end up doing is make everything incredibly expensive and a nightmare to oversee and certify. Traffic management in this country is a case in point.
New Zealand used to be a nation of can do, self-reliant, strong people. We are slowly turning into a nation of risk averse, insecure, second raters.
Risk is everywhere, risk is fun. If you want to manage risk the best tool is a team of well trained, well resourced, highly motivated people. Given that and we can take on any challenge and win most of time and if we don’t win, we learn.
If you were guaranteed a win every time it would be boring. Let’s take the shackles off, take some risks, let people innovate and experiment and get some fun back.
Cheers to the next three years – new Tamahere-Woodlands councillors Crystal Beavis and Mike Keir.
