Brown and Banks commit on communities

The Auckland Community Development Alliance(ACDA) has released the commitments given to them by the leading Mayoral candidates, Mayors John Banks and Len Brown
Armed with a Community Development Charter, and a set of questions designed to ensure voters knew clearly where they stood on the role communities would play in the new Auckland, the Alliance met both candidates recently. They were asked to both formally sign up to the Charter, and provide comprehensive answers to the questions.

‘The Alliance was very pleased that both candidates signed up to the Charter, which was a first for Local Government’, said spokesperson Yvonne Powley, ’and the answers to our questions give real teeth to communities looking to hold the candidates to their promises’.

The Community Development Charter will guide communication, planning, resourcing, support and participation between the new Council and communities in and across the Auckland region.

The nine questions asked by the Alliance address the record of each Mayor in the past, their understanding of key challenges ahead for social wellbeing and inequality and their specific promises to address them.

They also test their commitments on ensuring community input into Council and CCO decision making. Specific commitments on resourcing diverse communities to actively participate, and resourcing Local Boards to encourage communities to lead their own development, are given.

‘It’s critical that both the culture and practice of community development are inbuilt in the new Council, if the city is to live up to the hype of its establishment’ according to co-spokesperson Tony Mayow, ‘so we’ve sought some answers as to how that will happen’.

‘We’ve also asked them to give us the yardstick by which they wish to be judged, by asking what differences we’ll see from their three years’.
The Alliance believes the exercise has provided a reliable basis on which people can both judge for themselves the relative merits of the candidates.
The Alliance will distribute the full texts of the Charter, the questions and answers through its website, www.acda.org.nz, and mailing list, and expects they will be used by other organisations in their own work before and after the election.

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