Mayoral candidates Govern by public consensus -Ladour mayoral candidate

Press, 4 October 1977, Page 28

Mayoral candidates Govern by public consensus -Ladour mayoral candidate

Christchurch has been governed too long by a City Council majority that moves in the right direction only when it is pushed.

That is a main contention of the Labour Mayoral candidate (Mr Alex Clark). He wants voters to put Labour councillors — and himself — in a position where they can do the pulling for a change.

He promises that the pulling will be in directions indicated by the voice of the majority, not special interests. He insists that the party campaigns should be judged on policies, and none compares to that of the Labour Party. “There is a complete lack of policy from the Citizens, and airy-fairy policy from Values.” he said. 'The people are tired of the highly personalised attacks of the past. The present Mayor’s strategy has been to avoid controversial things. “But while people get angry at name-calling, they expect strong leadership. I think that has been his major mistake.” Voters who supported Labour would be “buying a package deal” in the range of policies. Some of them could be done quickly, some were more long-term. “We have got to come up with enough improvements so the people will say to carry on doing the job after three years,” Mr Clark said.

This campaign was an easy one to run on the leadership issue, because there had been no leadership under the present Mayor (Mr H. G. Hay)..

“He should not sit on the fence all of the time, and vote with the majority,” Mr Clark said. “I would make sure we don’t hedge around. People prefer leaders prepared to make up their minds, even if they don’t agree with the decisions made. People respect you for it.” Mr Hay had voted consistently with majority opinion after seeing that the masses had made up their own minds, often on the other side of a Citizens’ Association proposal. Responding to pressure groups at the last minute was different from referring matters to the people before the council had appeared to solidify its own attitude. A Labour council would reverse the process, by taking matters to community councils — or receiving advice from them — before they become issues and reaction had started.

A public servant for the last 20 years, and most recently head of Community Volunteers in Christchurch, Mr Clark said the council could not do everything with its own staff. Under his administration, there would be much more reliance on volunteers working in neighbourhoods, and on council encouragement of self-help groups. There would also be much more spending of money on visible improvements in the suburbs. When he first started campaigning more than a year ago, he thought the steady climb of rates would be a major issue. “But a more frequent issue in the past few months has been neglect of the suburbs,” he said. “That has come into focus through our walkathons. There are things people have been trying to get done for the past 20 to 30 years, and for as many years, no money has been spent in their areas at all.”

Mr Clark said there had been "literally no work done in ordinary suburban streets.” Most of the street money had gone into costly road works, traffic lights and things like the Durham Street railway overbridge. “I would like to have seen less effort in computerising the city centre traffic flow,” he said. “There are some parts of the city where we should be excluding traffic instead of making it easier for it to flow.

“Unfortunately, the council tends to get sucked in by higher subsidies for major works. That takes money away from other projects.” A Labour council during the last three years would probably not have demanded less money from rates than the present council, but differential rating would have been started much sooner. Over-all rate increases would have been kept at the same level, but they would have been shared more fairly between residential and commercial ratepayers. “I would like to think we could have been more efficient,” Mr Clark said. “They have nothing really to show for the money that has come in. The value for monev is not seen." Citizens councillors had

produced statistics to show that a higher percentage of money had been spent on roads and footpaths. Mr Clark asked where it had specifically been spent. “It certainly doesn’t seem to be the suburban roads that money has been spent on,” he said. “What I hear from the people certainly doesn’t tie in with suggestions that there has been increased money available. “The Citizens came in on a strong policy of repairing city roads, and we just haven’t seen that. An inordinate amount of money seems to be going into administration, and less on the actual job.”

Efficient staff were heeded to get the best job done, and the present council had underspent by about half on its staff training allocation. “I think we would have fought quite a bit harder for essential works such as the South Brighton Bridge, not for enor-mously-expensive developments in the inner city area,” he said. There should not be too many problems in persuading the Govetnment to move away from motorway developments in favour of fixing up ordinary streets, Mr Clark indicated, “The present Minister of Works and Development (Mr W. L. Young) is not all that impressed with motorway work, anyway,” he said. “He is just as subject to public pressure from communities as a Labour Minister would be.” He was aware of the argument that improvements to ordinary streets would encourage traffic movement to major roads, which would then have to be improved. But traffic was now getting concentrated in a few streets, making them hazardous to cyclists, noisy to nearby residents and an allaround nuisance to anyone working toward a better transportation system. Repairs to suburban streets would at least disperse the traffic, and make it easier for all users to move about safely. Overseas experience had shown that traffic would reach a peak, and that peak was coming here. “According to planners, we would have needed — and had — motorways in the 1960 s and 19705,” Mr Clark said. “Obviously, that prediction has been well astray. We have to set up incentives for people to use alternatives, and make the alternatives much more attractive to them.” The council could seek a by-law ■ restricting heavy traffic from a particular suburb, as the Auckland City Council had done, or restrict times at which such traffic could use major streets. He was aware of heavy traffic problems in Opawa Road, where even some Labour members were calling for a designated road.

“It is far too unsafe there,” he said, "but I would much prefer a bylaw saying that heavy transport must move by rail, and not on the road. I don’t think the noise and disturbance problem would be solved by a relief road. It is only shifting the problem.”

Mr Clark realised that many of his party’s policies depended on closer co-operation with the Government, and more money from that source.

“We would certainly try harder than this council to get Government help,” he said. “There is not enough effort made to involve all local members of Parliament a great deal more, and expect a great deal more from them.”

The rating system had been designed when city services had first started growing, and could not really cope with new demands on local government.

“We would be looking for further decentralisation of Government services,”- Mr Clark said. “Direct grants of a substantial nature need to be made by central Government. The massive bureaucracy should be split up, with the responsibility and the money given to local areas according to priorities they set themselves.”

That applied especially in ther social welfare field, where the $500,000 present budget "cannot be maintained 'indefinitely from out of rates,” he said. “Urban development also needs substantial financial involvement from Government. There should be low-interest loans from the Reserve Bank directly to local bodies.”

Mr Clark said that Citizens councillors had made much of a debt, mostly from Queen Elizabeth II Park, inherited from the last Labour council, “but at least there was a lot

more done in those three years than had been done by any other post-war council.” A new Labour council would not be concentrating only on spending money, but also on reducing waste and examining in detail the budgets of each department.

“We wouldn’t be setting out to save money so much as to make sure money comes out the other end in real work,” he said. “For example, a massive amount of paper comes out of the City Council. There is a lot of padding in council committee reports. Simplified reports could - be made, with access to technical papers freely available.” One of Mr Clark’s main organisation concerns is the proposed Department of Community Development, which would link planning, parks and community services in a section divorced from engineering work. Such a department, he said, would ensure that past criticisms of bad social planning could be laid to rest. Planning had been done in traditional ways for too long, and it was time for less tradition and more aggressive encouragement of public participation, as had been done in Wellington and Auckland.

Much of Labour’s planning policy is already contained in the new district scheme review report, but Mr Clark said that its implementatiort depended on the council getting out and pushing the policy along.

“What we are looking for is a greater degree of experimentation and adaptation,” he said, “more specified departures and comprehensive planning.” The council should be actively promoting those things, not leaving them in a report and waiting for people to come along and ask for them. Mr Clark said he would

like to be the chairman of a community development committee that would lead “a policy-setting department that would do its homework before the council makes a decision.” There would be more re-> liance on expert advice from outside the courtcil, response from public forums and proposals from community councils in doing that homework. The city administration also “needs some fresh blood from outside,” he said. “Some people have been too long conditioned by the system.” In social services, the present council’s emphasis “has been ort increasing the professional staff,” he added. “They are not really involving volunteers and the people. We would be looking at more money for self-help programmes, and the community centre

buildings should be a debit on the council’s housing programme, not community services. I don’t think the departments expansion has significantly affected problems in the city.” More time should be. spent in promoting Q.E. II park, and plarming other activities there — such as picnicking, a good creche and an outdoor theatre — which ' would bring in more regular users. It was necessary to ensure that such a high capital investment worked for more people before moving on to similar projects. Labour had objected to the Centennial Park sports stadium at first because it was just a 1974 election gimmick, reduced irt scale several times until it was “just now getting to the stage of a minimum response to their 1974 policy offering,” M? Clark said.

Then there was controversy over the way a construction contract was negotiated.

"We would still be interested in how they intend to pay for it,” he said. “If they are going to sell off land, they are in no better position politically because they accused Labour of selling off land reserves.”

Labour had no intention of stopping the project, but had to make certain it was used by families in the district instead of being taken over by “affluent people from neighbouring local authorities.” So far, Mr Clark said, the opposition had only grasped some superficial issues from Labour’s policy, an understandable political strategy, “such as the removal of librarybook charges and sportsground fees.” Yet those losses of revenue could easily be made up immediately from money left over from underspending in other areas.

The council was standing on its record, but it was time for a Mayor who was more than “a good-natured mart about town who doesn’t rock the boat, and who says nice things about overseas visitors,” Mr Clark said.