Christchurch City Councillor Melanie Coker has expressed concern about the state of the council and the need to fight for the values she brought to the table.
But another councillor has accused her of deliberately constructing a deceitful narrative disguised as inclusivity and kindness.
In a statement on her Facebook page, Coker highlighted the importance of approachability, inclusivity, and positivity, participation, collaboration, democracy, community-mindedness, empathy, social justice, integrity, ethics, sustainability and stewardship saying there was a huge amount of work to do to uphold these values.
Coker drew attention to comments made by Mayor Phil Mauger, which she believes should be cause for concern, particularly when it comes to preparing the Council budget for 2024-2027.
According to a local newspaper article, Mauger made progress cutting bureaucracy and reducing the number of meetings. However, decisions were being made behind closed doors, Coker said.
“The council now has one less meeting per month and meetings have less business than they used to. A lot of other stuff is getting sorted out in the background.” Mauger said.
Another issue of concern for Coker was the potential selling of the city’s assets.
Coker said “he unequivocally promised that he would not sell any of the city’s companies, like Orion, Lyttelton Port or Christchurch Airport. Yet he voted to explore the possibility of doing exactly that shortly after the election, when a report recommended a partial sell-down to repay debt and reduce rates.”
Furthermore, Coker was worried about the potential for cutting essential services, as Mauger expressed his desire to reduce services or stop activities to enable lower rates.
“One example at the moment is to cut to the budget of South Library behind the backs of councillors. Although not official, it’s damaging to trust and to the result for the community.” Coker said.
“Mauger said this week that staff would outline what the organisation’s essential, untouchable services were – and then what councillors ‘can play with’.
Coker believes that the next year is critical to the future of Christchurch.
She stressed the importance of keeping assets in the hands of residents, providing services to everyone, and ensuring that decisions are made in the open, with the voices of the many and the few heard, acknowledged, and acted upon.
However, Councillor Aaron Keown dismissed her comments as a textbook example of the modern-day Labour Party’s strategy 101, trying to attract supporters with a false narrative based on kindness and being inclusive. It’s all a lie.”
Councillor Sam MacDonald said “it was slightly alarming to see these comments creating anxiety in the community.
“In this term of Council, the Mayor spends significant amounts of time out in the community listening to concerns and finding solutions, we have two full council meetings in public a month and a finance and performance committee meeting in public.”
MacDonald said “Phil reached across the aisle to ensure we have a collaborative council by nominating Labour/ People’s Choice leader Pauline Cotter as his deputy.
“They work closely together. Regarding CCHL, majority of council voted to have an open mind and receive expert advice, there were no restrictions on People’s Choice Councillors putting their hands up to be on the Holding Companies board but it would seem they didn’t.
“We are currently consulting on the Annual Plan, where people can submit and be heard. Any changes to services would be consulted on and nothing changes (if at all) until 1 July 2024.
“Council agreed last week that our next 10 Year Budget would be transparent and useful to the community. These comments are unfortunate given all the information is readily available to Councillors and discussed in public.”
Melanie Coker was approached for additional comment, while Mauger was out of Christchurch over the Easter weekend.
However, Mauger will join Chris Lynch on Thursday for his regular fortnightly update, broadcast on chrislynchmedia.com and facebook.com/chrislynchmedia
