A New Mayor for the SuperCity

Over the past few years I have been consistently critical of our council. The Super City has not delivered on promised benefits. It’s bloated middle management structure has exemplified the worst examples of people who go to work to eat their lunch (very probably at the rate payers expense) and don’t understand who pays their salaries, nor the value they should be delivering.

If anyone needs proof of attitude and incompetence of this council, try going to the Papakura office and requesting a property file! You have to go there because you cannot do it online, and when you get there the response is worthy of John Cleese reviving Fawlty Towers.

But we now have a new mayor. And he was elected on the back of a raft of promises of what he could do to change all of this.
I have to declare I didn’t vote for him. I am skeptical of the impact career politicians can make on bureaucracies. As Eldridge Cleaver said “You either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem” And generally career politicians interests coalesce too neatly with the interest of career bureaucrats to be able to induce change.

But we have him for, at least, the next three years. So let’s give him all the support we can. Bemoaning incompetence won’t get us change. But encouraging and supporting Mayor Goff is the best shot we have at routing the ineptitude and enabling a culture change.

And any culture change at council has got to be for the better for all of us.