Thank you Paul for prompting better explanation (and thanks Andrew for
some very good points).
I would only accept the term "dysfunctional" about a council if it could
not reach decisions, as it is obliged and empowered to do, through
informed debate at table. Staff deliver up information and options, but
it is the public representatives who must collectively evaluate and
choose what to effect. Never has there been failure of such council
decision-making in Christchurch. Anybody who says there has been must
provide evidence or be deemed a liar. Such lies are being spread with a
vengeance, and, for the public good, must be neutralised now.
The destructive myth of council dysfunctionality was started by Prime
Minister John Key, being responsible for criminal acts. The one time
(mid-2009) a 7:7 vote was recorded at Environment Canterbury, this was
still a decision, for it meant the status quo was what prevailed (under
Standing Orders). Councils always follow Standing Orders. Always. Where
they don't it becomes grounds for dismissal of the chairperson/mayor.
What Key and the rural investor thieves he represents did not like was
the status quo - sound "sustainable" resource management. So he had the
(corrupt?) Auditor-General validate the illegal conflicted votes amongst
the seven that stopped the motion in question proceeding, just to ensure
that irrigating farmers would retain disproportionate say (and stake).
Key then whipped his crime into a lather of anti-regulatory hatred, to
disguise it then expunge all record in the holds of regional governance
(destroying ECan).
The big picture? - Three years ago approximately $120 Billion was the
asset value held each by central and local government. Entering hard
times it is this local profit source that Wellington head offices began
turning to to raise exploitation. Legislative changes of recent decades
(e.g. building regulation) have been shifting work from the Beehive to
Town Hall, which has pushed up rates for increased local services. But
the Key-Hide combine chose to turn rate-payer upset into cuts, forced
amalgamation and coup. Brutal dismembering of both local authority and
community cohesion is the Key-Hide legacy; 22-02-2011 blood is on their
hands (for constraining safe council regulatory service). The only
"dysfunctionality" here is in John Key and Rodney Hide's ethical
mind-set, of ruling-class greed.
And Paul cannot disguise, either, the leap of said councillor into the
ethical abyss. Trading public service experience (inside CCC knowledge)
for a higher salary as consultant on council matters to a wealthy
stakeholder is nothing like brave, for it cheats the public ever further
through costs (by-election, etc). Whereas the irony is not lost in the
CCC Mayor being charged with what he supported criminal Key in
mis-applying to ECan, the charge is no more true here, formally.
The relationship between said councillor's faction with the CCC elite
may well have been dysfunctional, causing a terminal frustration and
preference to exit, but that does not justify her joining the lie that
any council has failed in its duties, of becoming accomplice - and worse
- to higher power-elite crime. Said councillor involved in replacement
candidate selection, on behalf of her Iwi employer to optimise an
election outcome for them (by land-owner alliance), is a conflict of
interest as bold the nose on the defrauding grand authoriser's face. It
invalidates said candidacy, Peter Beck, in fact.
Is that clear?
On 04/02/12 17:21, paul scott wrote:
> I am reminded of the strength that Chrissie Williams had when she let her
lucrative salary go when she saw what was inside our sick and dysfunctional
Council.
More venal and destabilising tosh.
> I see our Council Rik as dysfunctional in a clinical way in that it can not
do anything valuable for us because it has become so weakened that all
decisions are made outside it.
2021 were shut out of much influence, using Mayor/CEO delegations. That
is politics. It is also legal.
Futile thrashing about in public cannot change these facts. What it does
is confirm inept inability to learn and adapt.
If you mean CERA controls most of the city (residential Christchurch)
then that's Parliament's decision and one the CCC had to welcome. It is
counter-productive to blame CCC, and further erode council authority,
over things it could never change.
The analysis and rough 'solutions' your protest proposes are confused so
would only deepen destruction of local democracy (ill-informed rather
than "uninformed", to correct my own error by previous post).
Yours is actually a knee-jerk defence of the indefencible: the root lie
of council dysfunctionality, covering up for unacceptable performance.
The voting public are not stupid: it is in them that we must place our
belief and trust.
> Democracy is a good word, but what strength do we have.
> Dudes the wall is up. They do not wish to speak to the mob of good ordinary
citizens.
Correct, under Anglican care, on 1-2-2012 a "mob" did bay for a
duly-elected and employed, but struggling, Council and CEO's 'blood'
(sacking).
John Key, Gerry Mataparae (on behalf of the Anglican Chief), take a very
deep bow.
> We are in the grip of central Government because we are soft and vulnerable.
> What can we do. What can we do.
Aotearoa, Republic!