New Zealand’s first crowd funded politician thinks we need to start saying more “Yes!”

We’ve had new businesses crowd funded, we’ve had shows and community events crowd funded, we’ve even had a beach crowd funded. And now Troy Mihaka, a Wellington City Council Lambton Ward hopeful has turned to PledgeMe to get crowd fund his City Council Campaign – Wellington’s biggest Crowd Funding site.

In his video, Mihaka cites standing as an Independent Candidate to be the reason he is turning to the crowd funding platform, “I don’t have the campaign budget of the major political parties.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhldM4RyHRs

Mihaka believes that the current City Council has a dismissive and fearful attitude to new initiatives, and that to get Wellington moving we have to work towards a “yes” to the proposals to help solve some of the long standing important issues, many of which we’ve been talking about for years such as traffic flow and transportation within our city. “Without a “Yes” how can progress happen?”

Mihaka has a keen interest in local politics, having been a former chairperson of the Dunedin Youth Forum and keeping up to date on Wellington’s local issues and watching the City Council debates streamed live on the Council’s website.

“I knew that something needed to be changed, and that if that change was ever to happen, I was going to need to get involved.”

Mihaka says that one of his main frustrations is the wrong items being on the agenda, and believes the City Council needs to get its priorities right.

“I believe there is consensus here in Wellington around what the main issues are: traffic congestion; attracting more businesses, and keep them here; keeping house prices affordable for more than just the elite. Yet the Council are so busy discussing less relevant details such as whether a new hotel on the waterfront will damage the views from Thorndon, whether bars should be allowed to serve certain drinks at certain times, or worrying about whether a particular landlord will maintain their building in an ascetically pleasing manner.

I think council needs to come back to what’s significant and focus on its core services and the more important issues.”

We are going to get only what we can really focus on. If we know something is high on our priority list, then we need to make a greater commitment to saying “Yes.” We need to not get caught up endlessly debating whether to shut down projects just because a few vocal people might not want change.

“There’s no such thing as a perfect solution, we need to focus on the needs of Wellington’s community as a whole.”

We’ve seen projects such as the basin flyover and initiatives to create more, much needed accommodation shut down, but Mihaka believes that if the City Council were truly committed to solving these issues they’d keep coming up with alternatives until a good solution came to light. Right now, these projects are being shelved and the City Council are going off and licking their wounds. Let’s get creative, and keep pushing ahead in the face of setbacks.

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