Len Brown

Public anger is growing against Len Brown and his endless ratepayer funded spin.

A public meeting of about 500 people has told the Auckland Council to rethink its intensification plans for the city, start listening to communities and stop spinning.

The biggest display of opposition to the council’s plans saw hundreds of people fill the Takapuna Grammar School hall yesterday calling for a rethink on a new planning rulebook for the city – or Unitary Plan.  Read more »

Planning Parrot says:

Who will hold Auckland Council Officers accountable for breaking the law?

Auckland Council is like a citizen. It is required to adhere to the same laws that govern our nation and every person in it.

Whilst Council is afforded certain rights and functions through legislation that empower it, that power is not unlimited.

In fact it is very limited.

Those limitations are the essential boundaries specifically created in law to protect people and property from Council. In doing this the law ensures that Councils and their delegates (council officers) are bound in their duties.

Without which we would experience law-less Councils and authoritarianism.

So what happens to Councils and their officers when they break the law?  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?

Len Brown must be in serious trouble if Brian Rudman is taking time out from writing about liberal elite arts and theatres to kick Len Brown in the nads.

On Tuesday, Auckland Council issued a rather plaintive rebuttal of the “misinformation” that was being spread regarding the draft Auckland Unitary Plan. The “myths”, we were told, were “causing misunderstanding and unnecessary concern amongst our communities”.

The next day, Mayor Len Brown was in full retreat, signalling a major rethink of parts of the plan, particularly about the proposed siting of high-rise apartments. While it’s too early to suggest these are signs the battle for an intensified city is lost, it does indicate it’s going to take more than a myth-breaking press release to persuade “our communities” Mayor Brown’s vision is the way to go.

If there is misinformation abroad, there’s a simple explanation. When you have an information vacuum, the laws of nature ensure it quickly fills up with gossip, rumour and, for want of a better word, misinformation.  Read more »

I was emailed this letter this morning and it has now been posted on The Auckland Council’s Unitary Plan Facebook page.

Basically Len is Lying again. Currently less than 1% of Auckland is Apartments, he is claiming 7% of Auckland can become Apartments BUT the plan actually allows 56% of Auckland to become Apartments.

To Leighton Smith,

I am a kiwi now living in AKL after 25 years overseas. One great aspect about returning is that Auckland hasn’t fundamentally changed after 25 years.

The Unitary Plan (UP) in its present form would make Auckland unrecognizable to somebody returning after 25 years absence.

Currently Auckland has less than 1% of its area covered by apartments. The UP will change that – with 56% of the Auckland area provided for apartments.

The council is mis-informing the public with its 7% coverage figure. What is not public knowledge is that the new Mixed Housing Zone provides for 10m height permitting 3 storeys of apartments. The min size is 30 sq m. The land size must be > 1200 sq m and frontage must be 20m.   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 is copping flak for his Unitary Plan. The Herald says he is in backdown mode but that is seriously under question as he rolls out a PR offensive against anyone and anything that opposes him.

He has a multi-million PR team at his disposal and they have started bombarding people with letters supposedly busting the “myths” surrounding his Unitary Plan.

There is, however, a real revolt breaking out. He has had his arse roasted at various community meetings over intensification, most recently in Papakura. The Shore is going into full revolt as is the Eastern Suburbs.

Len Brown is now using council spin weasels to try to save himself but it’s not working.  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 »

John Key and Steven Joyce have done the deal of the decade. They have convinced a private company, SkyCity, to front all of the $402M costs for a new convention centre for Auckland for the addition of just 230 new pokie machines in the casino.

Job done, making shit happen.

Details of the controversial SkyCity convention centre deal with the Government have been announced this morning – and the listed casino operator will pay $402m for the new centre.

The centre is expected to generate $90m of revenue each year. SkyCity will meet the full cost and be allowed to have 230 extra poker machines. Its exclusive license will be extended to 2048.

Known as the New Zealand International Convention Centre, the new centre will cost $315 million to build and fit-out, while the land will be worth $87m.

Construction on the centre is expected to begin in 2014 and open in mid to late 2017. It will cater for 3500 international conference delegates at any one time and attract an estimated 33,000 more delegates each year.  Read more »