So I turned on the radio this morning and heard an old man shouting at clouds. For those who don’t understand that reference, you need to go to the Simpsons. There, Bart’s grandfather was caught getting very agitated and complaining loudly and when Bart asked him what’s wrong he explained he was just shouting at clouds. It’s what he likes to do.

Unfortunately the old man I heard shouting at clouds was Auckland’s former mayor Les Mills. A man I like a lot. Mayor for 8 years, an international athlete and whose gym business is a worldwide phenomenon. So he’s not dumb.

So Mayor Mills was talking about the 15 urban redevelopments that are now scheduled for his city. He wondered if anyone had considered the amount of infrastructure needed for each one. The schools, the medical centres, the shopping centres and the like.

Now it beggars belief that a former mayor believes that the people actually running our cities and country are that incompetent that he is the only one who’s figured that out at this moment in time. Remember that Les was Mayor from 1990 to 1998. In 1990 less than a thousand people lived in the city centre. Now there’s more than 25,000. Under his watch the infrastructure was approved to cope with the development which continues today. It’s because that’s what councils have to do.

But I think it shows how far confidence in the workers who keep all our stuff working has sunk. It came on the day the Taxpayers Union released their Ratepayers Report. It’s an interesting read that highlights some big concerns. The level of indebtedness of Christchurch and Auckland Councils in particular.

But one statistic was leapt on viciously. Apparently there are more than 5000 council workers in this country paid more than $100,000. This was greeted with surprise that there are so many. Myself I was surprised there were so few.

The biggest single employer in Auckland is the council and it’s the same for most of the cities and towns in this country. Because they have so many jobs. Because we ask them to do so much. I heard a complaint that councils just have to do the basics like libraries and cutting berms so what’s with all these salaries. Well this is a small part of their work but it’s not a small job. There are 55 libraries in Auckland dealing with millions of books. Hundreds work for the libraries. From building managers to researchers to courier drivers to PHDs managing the historic collections. I don’t know how many berm mowing machines there are in this country but I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of them and I wonder about the army of mechanics fixing, maintaining and storing them and the wages for the staff running the fleets.

Councils are the biggest operators in our roading system. The State looks after the state highways but all the others are run by councils. Look around you. Every building in your city, every skyscraper, everything has had a highly trained eye run over them. With such big entities, the HR problems are enormous. The legal actions are manifold. I know a council lawyer dealing with 500 active files. The water system is something again. How many people know how to run and fix systems that complex. Can you fix a pumping station?

Councils are now our whipping boys. Even Central Government seem to blame them for everything. There’s much that could be improved but that is not going to happen without some well-paid people.