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Orewa 27th March 2008.

It’s a Mess—Council

This mess or less?

That’s the question posed by the Rodney District Council last Tuesday night at the first of a series of community meetings the council has called to help formulate its submission to the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance.

The “mess’ refers to the number of agencies involved in managing the Auckland region’s roads.

A chart, nicknamed the spider web, revealed at the meeting showed as many as 20 agencies involved in the region’s transport network.

“That’s too many, “says Rodney’s mayor Penny Webster, who says her council’s submission is likely to include a strong call for simplification of the region’s decision-making.

The Rodney Council is already calling for the abolition of the Auckland Regional Council.

“The ARC is indicative, and probably the worst example, of a bureaucracy run rampant. Nobody questions the intent or the commitment of the people involved, but as (the chart) shows the system is unwieldy, and that’s indecisive and is the slowing growth of the district’s economy,” claims Mayor Webster.

Speaking at the meeting at Warkworth, Mrs Webster pointed to the town’s notorious Hill Street intersection as an example of indecision leading to lack of solution.

Pointing first to the chart and then to the intersection, she asked, “how can we expect this mess to fix that mess?”

ENDS.

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