Media Release
City Vision-Labour Councillors - Auckland City Council
For Immediate release
Friday 15 February 2008

C&R Opts for No Elected Rep on Wynyard Wharf Plan Change

At this year's first City Development Committee, Citizens and Ratepayers (C&R) councillors chose not to appoint a Councillor to the biggest and most significant Plan Change to affect the city in the next twenty years.

Councillor Glenda Fryer, Chair of the Planning and Regulatory Committee during the last council term, says, "The Wynyard Wharf Plan Change will significantly affect how the inner city will grow, develop and look in the important downtown area. The decisions of the Commissioners hearing the Plan Change will influence the heart of our international city for decades to come. I consider the Plan Change is a policy matter in which elected representatives play a very important role."

"To have vital policy matters that are rightly the role of elected representatives put into the hands of independent commissioners is a retrograde step. Councillors are elected to make important strategic decisions about the future of the city, and this Plan Change is one of them."

Councillor Fryer put an amendment to the City Development Committee for the appointment of a councillor commissioner to join three independent commissioners on the Hearings Panel. The amendment was defeated on the votes of the C&R members of the committee.

"We should have accepted the wisdom of the Auckland Regional Council (ARC) who appointed no lesser person than their Chair, Councillor Mike Lee, to the Hearings Panel for the same Plan Change." says Councillor Fryer. "While both the ARC and Auckland City Council have land holdings in the Plan Change area, having independent commissioners and elected representative commissioners would have been a balanced and sensible solution."

She adds, "Unfortunately this action follows the precedent of the Banks and David Hay-led C&R Council who, in decisions at the Finance Committee on delegations, took elected representatives out of decisions on Resource Consents and Bylaw Dispensations."

ENDS

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