Here we go, another terrifying rates increase headline to spook Aucklanders into agreeing to an asset fire-sale…
Auckland councillors angry about Mayor’s suggestion of possible 22.5pct rates rise
Auckland Councillors have reacted angrily to their Mayor’s suggestion rates could rise 22.5 percent.
They’re saying the headline-grabbing declaration was made to try and get councillors behind plans to slash services or sell Auckland Airport shares.
But not everyone’s on board.
…the Boomer King sharpens his knives for the budget privatisation agenda and seems to have convinced Richard Hill to back him in selling off the AirPort shares.
For Christ’s sake, the Airport is a monopoly asset that makes Auckland Council huge money, why the hell privatise it?
We chose like morons not to appoint anyone to the board and they screwed us!
Former Mayor of Manukau, Sir Barry Curtis is damning...
Unfortunately, in 2015, the Auckland Council chose not to follow this practice of nominating a board member, a matter I find totally mystifying. Before Easter in 2020, the Auckland International Airport company board utilised fast track Covid-19 rules to raise $1.2 billion in capital, specifically excluding all major shareholders including the Auckland Council. This resulted in the Auckland Council’s shareholding being reduced to 18.5 percent.
..we have poorly managed this asset and now Wayne Brown and Richard Hills want to privatise it…
Entry ports to our city, both air and sea, are vital infrastructure to the Auckland and national economies and indeed, our security interests. They must not be forsaken. Only local public ownership, in part or whole, can safely secure the long-term interests of our city.
To protect Manukau’s interests the council purchased additional shares to lift its shareholding above 10 percent. This provided us with a ‘blocking share’ to protect our ownership. We participated in capital raising to protect our value and stop the diluting of our significant shareholding.
We successfully lobbied Central Government to change the rules around foreign ownership. We received regular, ongoing and substantial dividends which assisted to achieve lower rates.
The value of Airport company shares continues to grow. At the time of the Canadian Pension Fund’s first bid in 2007 the shares were listed at $2.80 per share. The offer was for $3.65 a share. Dubai Aerospace bid was slightly more. Since amalgamation, the combined value of Manukau and Auckland’s shares have more than tripled, a gain of $1.2 billion to Aucklanders. The current value is over $8 a share.
The Auckland Council has received well over half a billion dollars in dividends and a share buy-back from 2010. While no dividends have been received during the Covid pandemic, AIAL has indicated a resumption shortly.
The value of the Auckland Airport company, with its very large commercial and retail interests, will continue to grow. The Auckland Airport was built with public monies. It was owned and developed by the former Auckland Regional Authority until corporatised by central government in 1988. The Company was established with local government in Auckland owning 51 percent, but unfortunately, all but Manukau and Auckland sold their ownership interests.
…look.
Privatising our assets to cover the enormous cost of running this city is stupid beyond reason.
There needs to be a means of expanding budgets and services and if that is through City Bonds financed through the Super Fund or ACC or any number of huge Government funds, so be it!
We need big solutions not petty and self defeating budget cuts!
The Boomers elected Wayne Brown to ‘Fix’ Auckland, well, he’s privatising it!
Allowing Brown to hock off our assets is not fixing Auckland, it is sacrificing Auckland.
We need a far better plan than this madness!
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Cause and effect. Here’s another example;
The green zealots in this government hates cars. They devise a plan to make us not to use them and use our rat shit public transport offerings instead. Climate change gods sated! Smiley face emoji’s all round.
So…Auckland Council get hundreds of millions of dollars from that moronic 11 cent per litre of fuel tax that poor Aucklanders have to suck up! Where is it going?
If the answer is speed humps and other “traffic calming measures”, which it is, so nanny council, responding to the dictate of nanny government, can keep us all “safe” from the boogie man but in reality force us from car use, then stop the waste right there! Surely that money must go to funding better public transport. But it doesn’t, it gets wasted on woke ideology! Money from rates therefore goes on propping up public transport instead but nowhere near enough (like the fuel tax treasure chest has) to take it from rat shit status.
There’s budget issues from unexpected bills and I can get that and there’s pure waste of public money. We should not have the latter but we do and here we are.! Somehow, our cause and effect blind central governments fingerprints are all over this!
And to think that public transport was far superior in the 1950s, and most of it was removed on purpose. The roads have barely advanced since the 1960s, when they were already behind the times.
The cities were also much better at hosting major events and professional-level sports seventy years ago than they are today.
Let’s face it, the “we love our cars” mob are the reason we have rat shit public transport. We should have invested years ago but dumb arse knuckle dragging New Zealanders can’t think more than 10 minutes into the future
You mean rugged individualist workers who don’t have the time to in their day to take slow public transport that doesn’t go door to door.
Irony is that “traffic calming measures” increase carbon and toxic emissions.
And I seem to remember hearing the prick say that the reason the sale of one or two golf courses was off the table was because the consultation process had already taken place. (NinetoNoon, from memory).
haha, I heard that part of the interview, he said that it was too late to come up with fresh new ideas
The construction of a real political opposition will likely have to start at council level.
He wants to sell the shares that were stolen from Manukau to build footpaths in Remuera.
The Goof Ball Goff really got us all in the shit. Everything he ever touched turned to shit when he was in the Labour Government. Never had a proper job in his life.
If big cities are this expensive (arguably now too expensive for those living in them), how about maybe considering downsizing Auckland? Moving people (even if that requires some sort of subsidy) out of the city to other lower cost areas should be on the table. Everytime I go to Auckland it is just awful – I genuinely don’t know why people want to live there in the first place. I know “jobs” – but just about everything Auckland produces is traffic and nonsense. In 2023 there is no longer an excuse to have “service industries” (which is most of what Auckland “produces”) all concentrated in one place.
Warren Buffet would advise the mayor to always keep a toll bridge.
To keep the airport and fix the deficit all the council has to do is levy a special airport land rate or an arrival & departure tax for non Auckland residents.
He’s doing the right thing: Explaining to ratepayers what the range of options are by giving examples.
Wayne is doing his best to dig the city out of the debt created by the previous two leftist mayors.
I hear the sound of flushing.
Learn to swim Auckland
Decades,sayin, Auckland, look at the corporate greed exploit, sense, what, our place to be and noe the understanding fuck up now. six million of us now almost, and look Auckland, how fucked up the infrastructure, Eh!, Dovey, said it decades, afore this obvious fuck up.
“ We need big solutions not petty and self defeating budget cuts.”
So what are the big solutions?
“it woz Aucklundas wot dun eet to thumselves”–how a burnt out, charmless has been from the Far North became Auckland Supercity Mayor is still mind boggling…but as we now know with gerrymandering and low participation, it is the class backing that determines such things rather than candidate merit.
What is also disturbing is the number of gutless Councillors going along with Boomer King. When FNDC Mayor he used to pick Councillors and Board Members off, Steinie in hand, one by one.
From an article in stuff 2020
If David Cunliffe wants to become mayor he should stop chasing cheap headlines and come up with a plan to turn around the dysfunctional mess that Rodney Hide’s legacy to Auckland has become.
If you want to blame someone.
The guy is a complete idiot.
When I read the information sheet accompanying the voting papers it read he was and engineer and ex mayor of the far north. I thought civil engineer should have a brain.
The reality is that he is a thick as two planks welder turned property developer.
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