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Chris Lynch: Christchurch City Council lacks transparency

Author
Chris Lynch,
Publish Date
Fri, 6 Jul 2018, 4:16PM
The council is hiking rates by 50 per cent over the next 10 years. Photo / Edward Swift
The council is hiking rates by 50 per cent over the next 10 years. Photo / Edward Swift

Chris Lynch: Christchurch City Council lacks transparency

Author
Chris Lynch,
Publish Date
Fri, 6 Jul 2018, 4:16PM

The Christchurch City Council is being labelled the most secretive council in New Zealand and with good reason.

After an extraordinary five-month battle, the council finally released the costings of a seven-metre digital touch screen for the city's new library.

It has cost rate-payers 1.245 million dollars.

The council refused to release costings for months, despite being slapped down by the ombudsman more than month ago for failing to act within the laws of transparency.

On Wednesday Chef Ombudsman Peter Boshier made another judgement, referring the council's failure to observe its public duty to the Solicitor-General, asking that the Attorney-General consider issuing enforcement proceedings against the council.

Forced with the threat of unprecedented legal action from the country's top lawyer and legal action from the Tax Payers Union, the council caved, releasing the figure on Thursday.

In a carefully constructed press release, the council said " the huge, high-tech discovery Wall” — is a touch-sensitive, digital representation of Christchurch, allowing users to swipe their way through a virtual world of information.

It sounds pretty exciting, but the cost of the wall is at odds with the Mayor's self-described “back to basics” budget announced weeks ago, with an apparent focus on infrastructure and the usual things councils are responsible for.

The council is hiking rates by 50 per cent over the next 10 years in its so called back to basics budget and I'm pretty sure a million dollar touch wall doesn't sit well in a back to basics budget.

The lack of transparency is at odds with the Mayor's comments in her weekly opinion piece in the Christchurch Star where she get a free hit to, at times, spout council propaganda.

Late last year, she spoke about being more transparent on where rate-payer money is spent. She also wrote about wanting the council to get on top of its expenditure.

If the council was a champion of democracy, it wouldn't be forcing rate-payers to fork out a compulsory levy to pay for a 10 million dollar heritage grant to restore the cathedral.

There has been massive opposition to this, and more submissions against the grant than for it.

So is the council the most secretive in New Zealand? We asked the mayor to come on Larry Williams drive tonight to speak specifically about this matter and she told our producer we would need to speak to the chief executive as she has accepted full responsibility. We asked the chief executive to come on the programme, but have been told she is on annual leave today.

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