KOA Will Be At Christchurch City Council Meeting This Thursday, December 15th
The Christchurch City Council finally saw sense and abandoned its plan to sell City Care, earlier this year.
But Keep Our Assets Canterbury’s (KOA) fight to save City Care is not over yet. At its November meeting the Council decided that, unlike with Enable, it would not restore City Care to its strategic assets list.
Instead it deferred any decision on City Care until after it had received a staff report on what constitutes a strategic asset. That report will be discussed by the Council at its meeting this Thursday, December 15th.
Being on the strategic assets list (which currently comprises the airport and port companies, Orion, Eco Central and Enable) means that those assets can’t be sold without a process of public consultation.
It doesn’t mean that they can’t be sold – it simply means that we, the people of Christchurch who own them, have to be “consulted” first.
If City Care is not on that strategic assets list, it can be sold by this or any future Council without further ado.
And what about the other assets that aren’t on that list? What about Red Bus?
What about the city’s huge portfolio of public housing? Christchurch City Council is the second biggest landlord in New Zealand – that public ownership must be protected.
The Council’s assets collection is many and varied. In the last few days the Mayor has announced that Lancaster Park is uneconomic to repair and must be demolished. So, what will happen to the publicly-owned land it sits on?
KOA will keep on keeping on until the Christchurch City Council completely removes asset sales from its policy agenda.
And we will keep on calling for a proper public engagement process about what does and doesn’t happen to these assets that belong to the people of Christchurch and surrounding areas.
Murray Horton
Convenor
