Why selling Auckland Port Operations is a particularly silly thing to do

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It is a given that the right in power want to sell public assets off and the left want to retain those assets. And it appears that the right’s eyes are on Ports of Auckland.

Mayor Wayne Brown is clearly a fan of privatisation. He recently managed to get a majority of Auckland Councillors to agree to the sale of a significant number of the Council’s Auckland International Airport’s shares. I thought that the justification for the sale was wanting and that the decision would cost the City a significant amount in the long term.

The vote was close. Three progressive Councillors decided for various reasons to support the sale. If they had changed their vote the result would have been different.

Fresh from his success the Mayor has raised the possibility of the privatisation of Ports of Auckland’s operations.

From Finn Blackwell at Radio New Zealand:

Just two weeks after [Mayor Wayne] Brown won a contentious vote for the partial sale of the council’s shareholding in Auckland Airport, he has floated the idea of selling an operating lease for the port business and reclaiming some of the land for public use.

He said it would make the port more efficient but the union feared it could be a financial disaster.

Ports of Auckland operates as an independent business, working off port land owned by the council, to which it also pays dividends.

Brown has always been highly critical of the port’s performance saying it is inefficient and has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on a botched automation project.

Now, he has been looking into what leasing its operations and freeing up land could mean for the city.

Maritime Union Secretary Craig Harrison thinks that any privatisation will be a lose-lose situation for ratepayers, workers, and businesses.

From Bernard Orsman at the Herald:

Responding to plans by Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown to clear the way for a possible sale of the port’s operating business, union general secretary Craig Harrison said relinquishing control of the strategic asset would be a “lose-lose situation” for ratepayers, workers, and businesses.

“The Australian experience is privatisation of port operations creates another layer of management costs and profit-taking for no real benefits,” said Harrison, whose union represents most of the workers at the port. …

“The risks of going down this path are massive, and the only beneficiaries in the long term would be the new owners.”

He said the “one-off sugar hit” of privatisation would soon wear off if the port was permitted to effectively become a private monopoly.

“Splitting off leased port operations from land ownership does not change the fact the ports would be privatised and the new owner would have huge leverage over Auckland,” Harrison said.

Mayoral adviser Matthew Hooton has for some time advocated for the closure of the ports. His analysis displays a simplistic right wing laissez faire approach to the issue. Essentially the ports land is worth $X, the City only received $Y in value and it should receive $Z. Therefore it is failing and should be handed over to private enterprise to sort out and increase profitability.

But his analysis ignores the fact that the Port is a transport hub and a transport asset. As a hub it assists all sorts of economic activities to happen. Exporters find that their ability to send their goods overseas is cheaper because there is a local conduit. Importers enjoy the extra ability to get large volumes of goods landed and into their warehouses quickly. If the Port only broke even then it would still be generating a significant public good. Currently we do not charge for using roads realising that they provide an important service. I do not understand why Ports should be treated differently.

The second problem is that his proposal ignores the implications for Auckland’s transport system of closing the port. If you adopt a blinkered money only analysis of Auckland’s port then its closure can be justified. But Auckland City needs to think about the big picture. Imagine up to 663,000 extra container movements by truck from Tauranga or Whangarei into the greater Auckland area each year. POAL is in the centre of the most intensely developed urban area in the country. Of course it has an important role and should continue.

Improvements are possible and in particular more freight should be able to be transported once the third rail line on the Southern line is complete.

If the Mayor’s goal is to facilitate the conversion of Port land to other uses then handing operations over to a private entity is the last thing that he should be doing.

And private Corporations do not act in the public good. They are there to maximise profit. Giving them control of an entity with monopoly control of the downtown wharves is giving them a licence to print money to the detriment of the city as a whole.

Councillor Mike Lee has been involved in issues concerning the port since the 1990s. He has provided this fascinating insight into what happened the last time that an attempt to privatise the Ports occurred. The then National Government pressured the Auckland Regional Council to sell its 80% shareholding in the Ports. After Bruce Jesson, Mike Lee and others managed to stop the sale process that had been started the Government then imposed structural reforms designed to ease the sale of public assets but were thwarted when the Alliance managed to capture control of the new entity.

As Mike said:

To the consternation of the political establishment a viable alternative to privatisation had been created – holding on to public assets – and managing them to create public wealth in the public interest. “Economic Jessonism” – perhaps we might call it. This completely flew in the face on neo liberal conventional wisdom. I have absolutely no doubt that the remarkable success of the ARST between 1992 and 1995 was to have an important influence on the Labour-led government some ten years later.

Since that time the profits from the Port and other regional assets have been a key funder of Auckland transport and storm water projects – and are now virtually taken for granted in Auckland. It is hard to imagine how we could have embarked on the recent transport and other infrastructure upgrades without it.

How this issue plays out will be a real challenge not only to the Mayor but to all Councillors.

And if it succeeds it will make the long term development of the harbour more difficult and I am certain that it will increase costs to local businesses and consumers and threaten the working conditions of Maritime Union members.

Auckland Council’s finances – there is no crisis

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At the risk of being described as financially illiterate I thought I would revise my earlier post and set out why I think Auckland Council selling its airport shares is a particularly silly thing to do and why Council’s finances are not in a status of crisis.

There has been a lot of talk suggesting that the Council is in a financial crisis. Debt is apparently out of control and there is a “massive” deficit that needs to be resolved.

I don’t share that level of concern. The figures are large but so is Council’s overall asset base.

The last Annual Report indicated that assets were $70.4 billion and borrowings were $11.4 billion.

This is like a household having a million dollar house and a $162,000 mortgage.

And the debt to revenue ratio, as shown by this graph, is within Council’s usual expectations. During Covid Council decided to allow debt to go up to 290% of revenue. It less than 250% currently. Using my earlier household analogy this is like a family having a million dollar house, a mortgage of $162,000 and income of $65,000 per year.

So do we actually need to sell the shares?

In my view there are a number of reasons why we should not.

Historically the shares have performed well. Apart from the Covid period they have consistently provided dividend revenue and they have also appreciated considerably in value since the beginning of Super City as this graph shows.

They dipped during Covid but since the lockdowns have ended the shares are moving up in price. Following is a graph showing the share price over the past 12 months. As can be seen their value has significantly increased over the past six months. The 200 day moving average trend (grey line) is strongly positive. Given their historical performance and their recent performance now may not be a good time to sell.

For an entity that has not paid a dividend for a couple of years AIAL’s share price is surprisingly resilient. And I would have thought that the prospect of 18% of a public company’s shares hitting the market would cause nervousness. But the price is clearly trending upward.

Repeating the household example this is like a family having a million dollar house, a mortgage of $162,000, income of $65,000 per year and Kiwisaver worth $31,800. Except you get about $650 a year paid into your bank account as well as the capital gains.

And the income from the dividends is expected to increase significantly in the next few years. This graphic from a Council shows the analysis which backs the claim that the sale is the appropriate thing to do.

There are two things to note about the analysis. First of all the anticipated interest cost savings are static, despite interest rates being predicted to drop significantly in the next few years. This graphic from the recent Government budget shows by how much.

I appreciate that Council’s finances are complex and that the use of derivatives smooths Council’s interest rate out but to not allow for a reasonably significant reduction in the interest saved by applying any share sale proceeds to debt over time appears to me to be wrong.

And on the income side there is a healthy increase in dividend income until 2028 when the anticipated income flattens. This graph shows Council’s projected increase and what would happen if the gains for the first four years were extrapolated out.

I understand this is because staff anticipated that following 2028 increases would match the rate of inflation. With respect this is very cautious.

The graph indicates that there is a short term benefit in selling the shares and paying down debt. But after a few years of anticipated dividend growth Auckland Council and the region will be all the poorer for any decision to sell.

And it raises into question the Mayor’s rhetoric where he says that selling the shares will save the Council $100 million each year in interest costs. The net figure in year one is $58 million and it then keeps going down, even on Council’s figures.

One other figure, currently Council spends about 10% of its income on interest payments. Given Auckland’s growth and the need to provide infrastructure using borrowing to achieve this is not unusual.

There were other interesting aspects to the Mayor’s budget. He announced further funding for bus driver salaries to move their salaries to $30 per hour. Interestingly this matched the proposal made by Central Government in the recent budget. I wonder who is actually funding it?

He also wants to reduce the Natural Environment Targeted Rate. Given the environmental challenges facing the city in my view now is not the time to do this.

If I had control of the Council’s finances I would accept the Mayor’s proposed savings of $70 million, pump up the increase in rates to 10% to realise a further $110 million and borrow the balance of $145 million. The debt to income ratio would increase to just over 250% but would still be within currently allowed parameters.

And Council does not have to balance the books. Sudden shocks such as two one in five hundred year storms within a week of each other can justify more radical steps being taken.

Selling the shares will in the long term undermine the city’s ability to develop and maintain its assets. Big corporations are lining up to purchase the shares because they realise that in the long term they are a good buy.

I trust that Council will do the right thing this week and keep the shares. And I wish that the decision making process adopted was more conciliatory and less confrontational.

The renaming of Ceramco Park to Ōkaurirahi

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The local board recently had a formal ceremony to acknowledge the change of name for Ceramco Park.

As part of the Te Kete Rukuruku process Te Kawerau a Maki has gifted to the Local board Te Reo place names for a number of local parks.

All of the names are magnificent and I can recall clearly the excitement I felt when the names and the reason for the names were introduced to us.

The name for Ceramco Park is Ōkaurirahi.

It is a name that provides a perfect description of the area in its previous form.  It is something for us to reflect on. This is important to our community and for the local board, and as I said at the ceremony it is an honour to be playing a part in restoring mana to the land and to the community.

I believe the process is important.

Out west we have a smattering of Maori place names and Pakeha names.

To be frank the Pakeha names lack the beauty and the relevance of the Te Reo names.

The Maori names are beautiful and eloquent and descriptive. Just think of these names:

  • Titirangi – fringe of heaven
  • Karekare – rough sea
  • Piha – a reference to what we know as Lion Rock
  • Whatipu – the name of an ancient taniwha

And to this list we can add Ōkaurirahi – the place of the huge Kauri.  This is a traditional Maori name and it is great to see it being restored to this area.

This is an important process.  Te Reo Maori and Te Ao Maori are integral and unique to Aotearoa New Zealand.  They are beautiful and they need to be preserved and enhanced.

If you want official justification for this in 1986 the Waitangi Tribunal said this when it considered the Te Reo claim:

Some New Zealanders may say that the loss of Maori language is unimportant. The claimants in reply have reminded us that the Maori culture is a part of the heritage of New Zealand and that the Maori language is at the heart of that culture. If the language dies the culture will die, and something quite unique will have been lost to the world.”

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/TUTANG19860701.2.13

That rationale is one of the reasons I believe that making the use of Te Reo part of every day life is so important.

This is one of 19 Te Reo names that were gifted to the local board by Te Kawerau a Maki as part of tranche one of this process.  There are a further 20 names as part of tranche two.

The local board has unashamedly chosen to adopt sole Maori names for many of the parks throughout the Te Kete Rukuruku process.  We believe that proper respect to Te Ao Maori is shown by giving the Te Reo name primacy.

I took the opportunity to thank Te Kawerau a Maki again for this gift and also for their contribution out west, particularly to the protection of Te Wao Nui a Tiriwa, the great forest of Tiriwai in the Waitakere Ranges.

We share a common belief that the ranges need to be protected and enhanced and I expressed the desire that this term Council advances the Deed of Acknowledgement anticipated by the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act.

Submit!

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Auckland Council is currently consulting on the draft Mayoral budget.

For the Waitakere Ranges Local Board the budget if approved would have significant consequences.

Sandra Coney and I have already gone into some of the detail of what the consequences would be. The proposal is that the local board would have its budget cut by $765,000. This is well over 10% of the budget that we have control over and will cause major damage.

Our environmental spend will be devastated. The recent storms have shown the need to protect trees and deal with weeds to hold slopes together and prevent slips. At a time when we need to increase the spend on weeds and pests we will have to cut back on our current spend.

Our arts and culture spend will be severely compromised. The Arts sector in the west not only enriches the area but it is also a significant driver of economic activity and employment. It is not a nice to have. It is an essential feature of the west.

And community groups will be severely compromised. I am well aware of the multiplier effect of grants and payments that we make. Groups use this to either obtain further funding from other sources or to get locals to contribute voluntarily to improving local areas. Without this help their efforts may cease completely.

The Local Board’s recent have your say event attracted a number of submitters, way more than usual. I will not mention presenters by name but there was real passion as well as reason in all of the submissions and points they made were very cogent. They included:

  • Good governance of the city takes a long term view and the current proposal is a very short term view. 
  • Some of the developments at the edge of the city will incur massive expense and make the city less sustainable. We are better off intensifying.
  • First world cities have cost. The City Rail Link even now is still a much needed and transformative project.
  • Events provide tremendous social and economic and business benefits. To cut them is retrograde.
  • A larger rates increase would be equitable. The recent storm events provide social licence to do that.
  • A number of environmental groups emphasised the thousands of hours of voluntary work modest support to them achieves. They also pointed out that weed and pest control is a continuing effort, and if efforts were stopped even for a short time then the environment would quickly deteriorate and the work of many years would be wasted.
  • Citizen Advise Bureau received considerable comment. For a relatively modest amount they have hundreds of thousands of interactions with Aucklanders in need. This will be lost if funding is cut.

The suggestion that community leases should be increased to raise revenue received some attention. It was pointed out that the presumption of increased income was illusory. If rates are increased R&R groups would have as one of the major roles the raising of funds for Council. Many would not and would hand their hall back to Council. This would *increase* expenses for Council as the voluntary work of locals would have to be replaced by paid work from Council employees or contractors. Rather than using their efforts to contribute to community their efforts would be to enrich Council. Instead of Council being a giver it would become a taker. And in the meantime Community would be weakened.

The overwhelming message was the multiplier effect that local board and Council funding has. And what would be lost if this funding is cut.

What sort of city do you want to live in? If you do not wish to live in a city that is going backwards environmentally, artistically and socially then please submit.

Submissions close at 11 pm 28 March. You can make a submission online at akhaveyoursay.nz/budget.

Sandra Coney – The Mayor’s Budget 2023/24

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“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” *

The Auckland Council is currently consulting on the proposed Mayor’s Budget 2023/24 which makes enormous cuts in funding for community, the arts and environment.

This proposal is now out for consultation. It is critical that individuals, groups and community make their voices heard through this process.

You have until 11 pm 28 March to make a submission at akhaveyoursay.nz/budget. You can fill in a form or write your submission any way you like.

There is also the opportunity on Thursday 16 March to talk to the Waitakere Ranges Local Board in person.

This paper is an attempt to show succinctly what the Mayor’s Budget means for the Waitakere Ranges Local Board area. It has been enormously difficult to extract concrete information from Council, so this is not as complete as I had hoped. I have been unable, for instance, to find out detail about what the cuts mean for regional Environmental Services, which is key for this area.

The Council’s budget has two parts: regional spending governed by the Governing Body (the elected councillors), and Local Board budgets, for local activities. There are also sums that go to CCOs such as Auckland Transport and Watercare. These come out of regional budgets.

The Mayor’s proposed budget will increase the rates by 4.66% – or 5.66% if an additional $20 million is added for future response to storms. This is less that the rate of inflation which is 7.2% (as of 11 March 2023).

I’m going to concentrate in this paper on the environment, but will cover some information about community and the arts.

The Mayor’s Budget and weather catastrophes

Although it has not been adequately explained, Auckland Council is in deep financial trouble. The Mayor blames decisions made before he came along and stresses it is not of his making.

The Mayor says there is a shortfall of $295 million for the coming financial year. He proposes to make substantial cuts in administration and services, increase borrowing, and sell assets, even income-earning ones such as airport shares.

This comes hard on the heels of extensive flooding in some parts of Auckland, and catastrophic damage to many areas from Cyclone Gabrielle. The Mayor has not revisited his budget in the light of this tragedy to see what funds are needed to repair damage to public assets such as parks and to support community action to rebuild. The damage to the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park, for instance, will run into millions and only built infrastructure is covered by insurance.

Instead, the Mayor proposes a possible budget increase of $20 million to address future storms, but this sum seems as if it was plucked out of the air, rather than quantified. Essentially, the Mayor’s budget predates these weather events.

What is worse, it comes at the very time we need all our volunteer environmental groups and NGOs to throw themselves into the repair and restoration. If there’s one thing the events of the past months have shown us, it’s that we need to have healthy waterways and natural areas to cope with climatic events and we will look to our community groups to help with that work.

But that is exactly who will bear the brunt of the Mayor’s cuts. Support to environmental groups, such as regional grants for coordination, have been cut entirely. Then the Mayor has taken his knife to local boards where much of the funding for community and environmental action comes from.

Cuts to Local Boards

Some $16 million of total savings are proposed to come through 5% cuts to Local Boards.

The Waitakere Ranges Local Board is one of the hardest hit boards by this proposal and the way it has been calculated. The actual cut in the WRLB area is more like 10%. The chair of the WRLB, Greg Presland, points out that:

”[T]he means of calculating the loss means that the cuts are not evenly spread throughout the region. Per head of population this local board’s cuts are in the vicinity of $13.70 per year. In Howick and Kaipatiki (both $7.21) and in Orakei ($7.29) things are not nearly as bad.”

The claim of 5% cuts also hides that the cuts are not top-sliced off all budget lines. The total sum must come out of the operational budgets that fund community action, grants and environment and for operating our built assets such as libraries and halls.

There are two budget lines the cuts will have to come from: LDI and ABS. LDI stands for Local Discretionary Initiatives; ABS is Asset Based Services. LDI is where most of the WRLB environmental spending and support for community comes. The total LDI operational budget for WRLB is $1,332,400.

ABS is the operational funding for running Council-owned assets such as parks, libraries and community houses. The Board’s total operational ABS is $10,233,000.

The big items in the Board’s ABS are parks’ maintenance at $3,300,000, the running of Te Uru at $719,000, which is a major arts facility which brings a great deal of benefit to Titirangi and more widely, and libraries at $980,000 – the two libraries at Glen Eden and Titirangi with contributions to community-run libraries at Waiatarua and Piha.

The Board cannot make savings out of the parks’ maintenance. That’s because head office has decided that savings from cuts in these budgets are being taken regionally. Instead, the Local Boards are being directed to take all the savings out of the remainder of ABS and LDI and these are the ones the community depends on.

Generally, the WRLB does not have a lot of Council-owned assets from which to extract cuts. The WRLB is mainly made up of natural areas, including the largest area of indigenous forest in Auckland, mostly the 17,000 hectare regional park but also surrounding privately owned forest. Much of the Board budget goes towards keeping these surrounding areas healthy and controlling pest plants on private land. Amounts in the regional budgets carry out work such as possum and pest plant control in the parks themselves, including funding which comes from the NETR (see below).

The NETR and WQTR

Back in 2018, the Council instituted two regional targeted rates, the Natural Environment Targetted Rate or NETR and the Water Quality Targetted Rate or WQTR. A targeted rate means that it cannot be used for any other purpose than that for which it was collected. You’ll find these rates listed separately on your rates demand.  The implementation of these rates followed extensive consultation with the Auckland public who supported the idea.

These rates were to beef up spending in the environment. There is still a base amount that is spent on the environment that comes out of the general rate. The NETR and WQTR were put in place to expand and speed up work on the environment and water quality.

I’m going to focus here on the NETR because this was very important to Waitakere. $33 million was to be collected each year. This was to be spent on 48% protecting our regional parks; 36% kauri dieback; 9% expand community and school action; and small amounts to regional biosecurity, marine ecology, region-wide biodiversity etc.

The Mayor proposes to cut both these rates by two-thirds for 2023/24 or probably future years. This is intended to help keep the overall rate increase down. To offset these cuts, the Mayor proposes that “reserves” of these funds will be used to top them up. In his words: ”But don’t worry, the activity under NETR and WQTR won’t stop. We have reserves in those targeted rate funds to carry on the planned activity for the 2023/2024 year.”

It turns out that in each year since they were instituted, not all the NETR and WQTR was spent on the purposes for which it was collected. In each year about $6-11 million of the amount collected was not spent and stayed in the bank which would have helped balance regional budgets. The reasons given for not spending all the NETR and WQTR are Covid, lack of staff and contractor capacity. In other words, spending on the environment and water quality was short-changed for four years.

The total amount of the NETR reserve is $20 million. The Council environment department planned to spend these reserves in the current year – $6.3 million – and future years, on top of the $33 million collected each year.

But this is not what is intended by the Mayor. A two-thirds cut, means the NETR collected in 2023/24 would be about $11 million instead of $33 million. To reach the budgeted $33 million, all the reserves would be used in one year and then still be short by about $2 million. Cumulatively, this amounts to short-changing the NETR spend by $22 million.

The NETR reserves should be spent on the environment and there should be 100% collection of the NETR for 2023/24.

Other environmental cuts

Information about cuts to base regional environmental budgets has not been forthcoming. The Mayor’s proposal says broadly there will be “reductions in regional environmental services”, but these are not specified nor their dollar value given. It seems that not all environmental programmes would be funded, the planned expansion of the pest plant programme would not occur, other programmes and services would be “paused”. It is also likely that there will be cuts in regional parks spending, which is where almost all the Council-owned natural areas are located.

 The Mayor’s proposal does specify the following will be cut, although the wording is once again very vague:

  • Services at Arataki Visitor Centre in Scenic Drive – it is not clear how deep these cuts are and there are suggestions Arataki may close
  • School programmes on environmental issues
  • Regional community and education programmes
  • Outdoor experiences for young people
  • Regional climate action grants
  • Regional environmental, natural heritage and historic heritage grants.

This last item includes the Regional Environment and Natural Heritage Fund which many environmental groups depend on. On top of this, the Local Board is unlikely to have funds for grants. This means that collectively, with reduced NETR spending, reduced WQTR spending, unknown cuts in environmental budgets, regional environmental grants cut, and Local Board grants cut, there is next to nothing available for community environmental action.

The cumulative loss to environmental action will be immense and hard to recover from. Groups that lose a coordinator, will be hard-pressed to get back to this stage again. In the meantime, the possums and rats will reproduce, the weeds will multiple and environmental restoration will go backwards.

Airport shares

The Mayor proposes to sell all the Council’s 18% shareholding in Auckland Airport. These shares were inherited from legacy Councils at amalgamation. Arguments against this are that once sold, they can never be retrieved, and that most cities maintain an interest in such a strategic asset. The Mayor makes much of the lack of dividends for the last three years during Covid, but ignores the capital gain of the shares, earlier dividends and projected future dividends.

Writing in the Herald, Kushlan Sugathapala showed that while the Council did not receive the expected airport dividends during Covid, the value of the shares has more than tripled from 2011 to 2018, from $632 million to $1.8 billion, a capital gain of $1.2 billion in 7 years. With dividends and a share buyback, a total gain to Council of $1.7 billion in eight years from 2011 to 2019. The airport is estimated to pay Council a dividend of around $30 million this year.[i]

Alternatives

The Council does have other options which briefly are:

  • An increase in rates – the current proposal is less than inflation
  • Greater borrowing, the Council’s assets and credit rating would allow this. The Mayor proposes $75 million borrowing but even using Council’s very conservative approach it could safely be up to $140 million.
  • Cuts in administration greater than those proposed and less use of costly out-sourced contractors. Generally this is a hidden area as far as constituents are concerned.
  • Bringing more services in-house rather than out-sourcing.

Points to make in your submission

The WRLB Local Board Chair Greg Presland has suggested people making submissions might want to make these points:

  1. Rates should increase to the current rate of inflation (7.2%). Anything less than this is a net cut at a time when the repair job for Auckland is of utmost importance.
  2. You oppose cuts to local board funding. If there are to be cuts to local board funding these cuts should be shared equally between all local boards.
  3. You oppose cuts to environmental services. If there is one thing that recent events has shown it is how threatened our environment is and how much we rely on it. Now is the time to enhance environmental protection, not degrade it.
  4. You oppose cuts to community groups. These groups perform a great deal of good and cutting their funding at a time where community resilience is at a premium is a retrograde step to take.
  5. You oppose cuts to the Arts Sector. Out west the Arts are a major contributor to our quality of life as well as a huge benefit to the local economy. Council’s investment in this area has direct tangible social and economic effects. We cut support at our peril.
  6. As far as possible debt should be used to fund all activities where there is a long term benefit.
  7. You oppose the sale of Airport Shares. These will start paying dividends again later this year and are appreciating in value. Selling them now will cost us in the long term.

To these I would add:

  • You oppose 2/3 cuts in NETR and WQTR
  • You oppose the use NETR and WQTR reserves to partly plug the gap

The Local Board’s LDI and ABS where cuts are expected to be made

To just to give you an idea of what those budgets include, its things like the list below:

Environment

  • South Titirangi Restoration LDI $15,000
  • Pest Free Waitakere Ranges Alliance Coordinator LDI $75,000
  • Climate Action Programme LDI $40,000
  • Ecomatters native plant nursery LDI $11,550
  • Ecomatters Ecofest Festival LDI $11,600
  • Ecomatters centre LDI $40,500
  • Ecomatters Love Your Neighbourhood LDI $11,600
  • Love Your Place Environment Awards LDI $5,800
  • War on Weeds LDI $26,600
  • Eco-volunteers in parks LDI $45,000
  • West Coast Animal Management Team LDI $35,000
  • Community Weed Bins LDI $96,056
  • Bufferzone Weed Project (working with private land owners next to regional parks) ABS $50,000
  • Our Backyard – plant pest control in Waitakeres, attracts extra regional fund LDI $100,000
  • Surveying West Coast shorebirds LDI $7000
  • WRHA Welcome Pack LDI $13,500
  • Project Twin Streams maintenance ABS $246,000

Community

  • Community grants LDI $75,000
  • Anzac Services LDI $5,000
  • Libraries ABS $981.292
  • Living wage – top up for workers at Community Houses LDI $25,000
  • Community halls – grants to communities who own or run halls LDI $42,000
  • Civil Defence emergency resilience LDI $25,000
  • Pasifika youth programme LDI $15,000
  • Youth Connections LDI $25,000
  • Youth programme LDI $20,000
  • Hoani Waititi Marae ABS $75,000
  • Glen Eden and Titirangi Community Houses ABS $88,000
  • Free community booking GE library LDI $3500
  • Community Waitakere LDI $32,000
  • Maori broker/engagement LDI $35,000
  • Neighbours Day grants LDI $6,000

Arts

  • Lopdell Precinct ABS $153,166
  • Te Uru operational grant ABS $684,536
  • McCahon House ABS $23,053
  • West Coast Gallery ABS $15,962
  • Upstairs Gallery ABS $51,589
  • Shadbolt House ABS $10,373
  • Glen Eden Playhouse ABS $18,520
  • Open Studios ABS LDI $33,000
  • Community Arts Programme $19,000
  • Going West Festival LDI $60,000
  • Heritage Conference LDI $22,000

*This has been written in my personal capacity and is not a Board document + Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias

Sandra Coney QSO – Member of the Waitakere Ranges Local Board

[i] NZH 6 March 2023, p A23