A council disunited

Press, 4 July 1983, Page 20

A council disunited

The worst fears of those who criticised the structure of the Canterbury United Council, and who prophesied that dissension and disunity would be its lot, are being realised. Last week, the council proved itself incapable of making headway on one of its most fundamental duties: the creation of an urban transport area within the region on which to base future planning. Parochial factionalism, and an unwillingness or an inability to consider the question as a regional issue, were the stumbling blocks. The members of the council cannot be blamed entirely for this, although it was reasonable to expect them to accept the desperate need for vision and co-ordination on such issues. The seeds of the problem were sown when the council was created as a makeshift, second-best version of regional government. Its structure is fundamentally shaky and falls far short of what is needed to reform the boundaries of territorial local bodies and to create a directly elected regional authority. Nevertheless, for all its inadequacies — and they are many — a United Council is all that Canterbury is likely to get for some time, and it already belies its name. The opportunities for co-ordination and co-operation that the council affords might be limited, but it costs more than $1 million a year to have them. When even these limited opportunities are frittered away, and when the council resorts to inaction, the whole exercise becomes futile. The council is obliged by law to settle on an urban transport area. No other body can determine the limits, although the council’s final decision, after the consideration of objections to a proposed scheme, is subject to a right of appeal to the Local Government Commission. Nothing can begin until the council puts a proposal before the public. An attempt was made to arrive at a proposal by consensus among the 19 local authorities that are represented on the United Council. This proved impossible. Consequently, a formal vote was required. To have something to vote on, the United Council’s urban transport committee unanimously recommended that the proposed area be identical to the interim transport area being used this year for the allocation of urban transport funds from the Government. In essence, the meeting of the council last week was asked to accept, as a working hypothesis and basis for public discussion, the

conditions that are now being applied provisionally. Tied voting and a casting vote for the status quo meant that nothing was accomplished; the council still does not have a proposal. Opposition to the suggested course came from local bodies outside the proposed area. Because they are outside the area, these bodies are not liable for transport services levies, but they expressed concern about the extent of levies for future services that they might then have to pass on to their ratepayers. One councillor, who abstained from voting, properly questioned the natural justice of an arrangement that allows the block rejection of a proposal by local bodies that are not immediately affected and that are not likely to be affected in the foreseeable future. The rural local bodies might have stronger grounds for objection than they disclosed; but the Urban Transport Act explicitly provides that only those parts of a region that benefit from a service can be asked to contribute to its cost. Any future levies resulting from an extension to the service are also subject to processes for objection and appeal. One criticism of the proposed area was that it included rural land that would not require urban transport services for perhaps 10 or 20 years. Such expectations are, surely, the reason for planning and the purpose for which the council is meant to exist. Whatever were the reasons that prompted the members of the council to act as they did — and they might have been perfectly valid reasons from a parochial point of view — the fact remains that the council is tying itself up in knots. It is becoming an arena for local rivalry and insufficient effort is being made to compose differences into workable plans for the good of the region. Sectional interests, which are a direct consequence of the way in which councillors are nominated to represent their respective local bodies, have led the council in this instance to abdicate its responsibilities, at least temporarily. Ratepayers are entitled to ask what use the council will ever be, when it is unable to come to grips with the relatively simple task of setting an urban transport area. Councillors who have to wear two hats have a difficult task to satisfy their divided loyalties. If the Canterbury United Council is to have any value at all, its members will have to try harder to separate their regional and parochial responsibilities than they did last week.