Amalgamate Or Pay A High Price

Michael from Trentham

It's come around again - the Wellington Super City scheme or the Hutt Valley Not So Super City and Wellington City-Porirua-Kapiti Not So Super City alternatives.

Auckland amalgamated its seven councils into a single unit in 2009 and there was a concerted effort to do likewise for the Wellington region in 2015.

We have gotten over the Auckland shock where a lot of people had considered it a kind of failure to now when it has been deemed a substantive success. The chief finance person in the Auckland CC said in 2019, amalgamation had saved Auckland ratepayers two billion dollars. And judging from that the current savings would be around three billion dollars.

Most people living in other parts of our region have strong links to Wellington city. In so many ways I feel proudly bound to Wellington even though I have never lived there past a few days since my first year at college. So the city of Central Government and of Government departments and housing most of the things that attract me from outside the boundaries of my home, presents no problem to me in being part of a Wellington Super City: second largest city In NZ and 500,000-strong and takings the learnings from the Auckland model to not make their initial mistakes and errors of judgement.