Auckland

Len Brown is being castigated for his draft Unitary Plan, and rightly so.

He knows he is in trouble because now at every public meeting there is a small army of paid council officials handing out hastily prepared documents in an attempt to counter the opponents of the Unitary Plan.

One wonders though why the $30 million rate-payer funded spin doctors are even being deployed to defend the plan…I thought it was supposed to be a draft? Surely the process of public submissions is so people can voice their support or otherwise? Why the need to defend the plan?

Unless of course we were all supposed to meekly submit and prostrate before the Night Mayor for his luminary vision for Auckland.

Len Brown is also being very sneaky and furtive over some aspects of the Unitary Plan. Like his plans for stealth tax.

You have to look very carefully to find this, because you see it is not included anyway in the section of the Council website that deals with the Unitary Plan…instead it is hidden in a little traversed area called the Rural Urban Boundary, where there is a link to an Addendum to the Unitary Plan.  Read more »

Another post from the Policy Parrot

A few weeks back a US based major planning institution published an article on-line about the fallacy of planning and specifically how planning documents mostly never result in success.

Those documents are relegated to the consigns of the ‘million dollar shelf‘.

Here in Auckland the Council has produced two very expensive documents:

1. The Auckland Plan;

2. The draft Unitary Plan.

Could it be that both of these documents are imminently due to be stacked away on some shelf, forgotten and gathering dust?  Read more »

Unitary Plan – two story promise handout, more lies from the council

Len Brown’s unitary plan lies are coming back to haunt him. Together with his spin weasels they have been telling people that they can’t read what is in the unitary plan or that they are too stupid to understand it.

But understand it and read they can and what they are finding out is that Len Brown is lying. Where Len Brown claims 7% of Auckland for apartment the reality is over 50%.

Half of suburban Auckland could be built up with three-storey apartments and residents will have no say when developers move into their street.

After nine weeks of telling Aucklanders the maximum height of “small-scale apartment buildings” in neighbourhoods was two storeys, the Auckland Council has admitted the height limit is three storeys.

Three-storey apartments are possible in the “mixed housing” zone in the city’s new planning rulebook. The zone covers 49 per cent of urban Auckland and most suburban streets have some degree of mixed housing.

The council has also told the Weekend Herald that developers can apply to exceed the four, five and six-storey height limits in the terraced housing and apartment zones, which make up 7 per cent of urban Auckland close to town centres in the draft Unitary Plan.

It gets worse…the unitary plan allows for non-notification.

Last night, Penny Pirrit, head of regional and local planning, denied the council had not been upfront with Aucklanders over the maximum heights in the two zones, saying the figures given were what was permitted as of right and, like now, developers could apply to build higher.

“At the moment [in the mixed housing zone] the plan says as a permitted activity it is 8m but there is the opportunity to go to 10m,” she said.

Ms Pirrit said applications to increase the height to 10m were a non-notified restricted discretionary activity, which meant they would be decided by officers with no input from residents.

Once again we see a council officer telling us that Len Brown when he said 7% wasn’t wrong…except he was.

When will Len Brown start telling the truth to Auckland residents? When will he go on television and announce his resignation for such deceit?

The Planning Parrot writes:

Whilst Mayor Brown stubbornly continues to press on with the Unitary Plan he also continues to not listen to anyone. And he refuses to look around to see who is lurking and waiting for him to make a mistake (that is perhaps inevitable) if the Unitary plan as drafted succeeds.

The property industry has warned since the submission process on the Auckland Plan that if the Mayor continues to press for a compact city that includes a draconian RUB (Rural Urban Boundary) then it risks forcing the building and developing industry to consider other locations which will have the effect of dragging people from Auckland as they seek a more affordable lifestyle and business a viable alternative base.

It’s blatantly apparent where those locations are. Auckland is bounded by three predatory and desperate Regional Councils who can see the opportunity a compact Auckland city offers them.

The Waikato, Tauranga and Kaipara Councils are growth hungry.

During the Auckland Plan process Environment Waikato Councillors and Policy planners attended workshops and submitted on the Auckland Plan, endorsing it’s compact strategy.

Of course they would wouldn’t they?  Read more »

10 Questions for Len Brown:

1. Do Roger Blakeley and or Ree Anderson get paid a bonus for delivering Unitary Plan on time for notification?

2. If the answer to question 1 is ‘yes’ then do Roger and Ree give a toss if the plan is quality or deliverable?

3. Lenny B where is the evidence and analysis required for the Unitary Plan’s Section 32 report that helped you make informed decisions about the future Auckland or did you just write your own vision and hope to find some scraps of evidence to support it?

4. How many people on Council Unitary Plan work streams are graduates?  Read more »

Len Brown has realised that the unitary plan he was dying in a ditch over just a few months ago has turned sour on him.

This week his mayor in the chair session got hijacked and then Len got hammered at a public meeting in Papakura. He copped a pasting on the unitary plan, the call centre, and his vote to deny the disabled the oldies access to the pools.

Despite being a fan of intensification, and his rank hypocrisy by residing in an area protected from intensification he was set to push through his plans come hell or high water.

However it turns out that Len Brown is becoming the master of the backdown. that is why he is deploying his multi-million dollar PR spin weasels to tell all the citizens that we are wrong and he is right.

Auckland Mayor Len Brown is backing down in the face of a citywide revolt against high-rise apartments and infill housing in a new planning rulebook for the city.  Read more »

The wowsers are convinced that the convention centre-for-pokies deal will increase the number of pokies by 230, and that these things are springing up everywhere, sucking in innocent bystanders and hoovering out their wallets. The reality is very different – the Dept of Internal Affairs has operated a sinking lid policy for over 10 years, and in fact has reduced the number of pokies over the whole country.

In Auckland alone, the biggest market by far, the number of pokies has reduced by 40% in 9 years. Here are the figures:   Read more »

Len Brown claims his rates increases are “dropping” and that they average only 2.9% across the city.

The rate of inflation alone is 0.8% and Len Brown promised to hold rates increases to the rate of inflation…he broke that promise a long time ago.

Now he is lying about rates increases across Auckland.

The tipline has bee flooded with extortionate rates demands all at the capped rate of 10%.

Hi Cam

Sorry about the poor quality – can take another one if you like

Our rates went from  $2533.44 to $2980.65 – an increase of over 16%.

They knocked it back to 10%, but its still total bullshit. Theft!

Read more »

How communities can beat the Auckland Unitary Plan and thwart development – A guest post by The Planning Parrot

Communities are worried about the Unitary Plan and so they should be. The ‘rule book’ intends to dramatically change the way land can be used in Auckland with a distinct appearance of directing development towards intensification and predominantly apartment buildings. The scale of change is massive.

But can the Council simply railroad this plan into fruition or does the Council have limitations?

The answer is Auckland Council cannot do whatever it wants. Land owners and communities are provided the right to participate and negotiate changes to the Unitary Plan if they disagree with any part of it.

So how can a community change what is proposed for it’s own area?

Firstly what is the Unitary Plan?

The unitary plan is a rule book consisting of multiple layers in a pyramid type hierarchy starting at the top with policies and issues and cascading down through objectives, rules, controls and assessment criteria.

The rules are essentially everyday black and white rules mostly about the type of building shapes and the activities that can be conducted. Planners will have a better understanding of the intent for the rules by reading the policies and objectives. This is the written section of the unitary plan.  Read more »

On Wednesday the Environment Court released a very interesting decision that is bound to have wiped the smile of Len Brown’s face today. The Herald has an article about it, but misses the important factors.

Plan Change 163 was an Auckland Council attempt to list properties in the Residential 1 and 2 zones of Auckland.

The decision is fascinating because it is highly unusual for the Court to make comments about process, time and who is to blame for delays and issues of process. Judge Smith has gone further to detail an anatomy of delay and has squarely pointed his finger at  Auckland Council with a 15 page savage ankle biting.

But first the background.

Auckland Council recently courted Government officials and ministers in an attempt to seek legislative change to benefit a fast track process on the Unitary Plan that would give effect to the plan on notification.

In argument Council justified that the process if appealed would likely take 3-6 years and so it additionally sought that appeals rights be limited to matters of law – which is a blatant attempt to stop the Environment Court from interfering with the plan it feels is ‘perfecto’.

To back its position, the Council foolishly fingered the Court for delays in past plan changes stating that the Court is the reason things take so long.  Read more »