One of the very few dividing lines between the two Mayoral frontrunners, Kerry Prendergast and Celia Wade-Brown, is the issue of local government amalgamation.
Unsurprisingly, Celia is dead against the idea…
Celia says “I am sceptical whether wholesale amalgamation would improve local character, costs to ratepayers or democracy.”
She believes that there may be some room for improvement in regional governance. With the new regional Environmental Protection Agency arriving soon, the regulatory functions of Regional Council may need some changes.
While incumbent Kerry Prendergast is keen to see amalgamation happen in Wellington, and soon.
Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast has said Wellington could have its own super-city, or cities, by 2013.
Eight territorial authorities and a regional council were too many for a population of half a million people, she said.
What do you think?
WCC Watch 
I think combining Porirua with Wellington, and Upper Hutt with Lower Hutt might be sensible. But a Super Wellington, not yet. I think Auckland has gone too far and is too big. Pukekohe and some other areas on the fringes probably should not be in the Super City as they have special characteristics which are worth perserving and the local populations are opposed. At the end of the day, it’s about local government, so it’s what the local people want, not the politicians. Having said that the GLC in London have a neat new council building and our one is a little tired looking.
It bothers me that everyone is talking about this at extremes of the spectrum. The options haven’t been explored or presented yet, but already everyone has formed an opinion that it’s automatically going to be some horrible Rodney Hide driven Auckland style affair that reduces representation, and depending on their ideology that’s either a good thing or a bad thing in their minds.
We should be able to discuss the options first and find out what would be best for everyone. We probably don’t need to completely redraw the boundaries, or reduce representation, to achieve some of the benefits. And maybe when we actually have the conversation we’ll find there are some boundary or representation changes that people would actually want.