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Complaints about shit in the street more than tripled, to 21,000, in the eight years to 2017;
for needles the number shot up from 290 in 2009 to nearly 6,400 in 2017.
The city’s sanitation department spends half its $60m street-cleaning budget on the stuff.
Meanwhile, a typical one-bedroom flat now rents for $3,440 per month, according to Zumper, a rental website—the highest figure in the country.
The median house price has nearly doubled in the past five years, to $1.6m.
San Francisco is an extreme example of a national trend among big cities:
demand for housing far exceeds supply.
Since 2010 new jobs in San Francisco have outpaced additional homes by a ratio of eight to one.
The city’s zoning laws are among the most restrictive in the country.
They limit the height and density of new buildings and give local residents, often property owners, the ability to severely delay new development.
Most of the city’s land area, particularly the posh western bits, is zoned for single-family homes, which now comprise one-third of its housing stock.
Almost all the city’s land faces height limits of 40 feet, or about three storeys.
The result is a city where rents are sky-high but buildings are not.
The planning process is a bureaucratic quagmire, made worse by NIMBYism and nonsensical neighbour complaints.
City councillors use the process as a negotiating tactic to extract fees and taxes from developers.
“Housing still isn’t built because of these obstructionists.”
She would also like to cut bureaucratic delays and slash building times in half.
Though she grew up in public housing and until recently lived with a flatmate, Ms Breed has come under attack for being too cosy with developers (or “real-estate speculators” as leftish critics vilify them)—and with the right.
the new mayor will have little over a year to show progress on the city’s housing and homelessness before the next election rolls round. Given the stubborn persistence of these problems, the winner’s tenancy in the mayor’s office may be rather short-term.
Buying out the 21 homes making up the failed Bella Vista development was the only option available to avoid a potentially damaging legal case, an investigation has revealed. Tauranga City councillors on Wednesday agreed in principle to purchase the properties which homeowners were forced to evacuate on March 7. QC Paul Heath produced a 158-page report shortly before that decision which outlined a raft of failures from council dating back to December 2016.
I wonder how much that QC report cost?
Common problem, these reviews, reports, working groups, inquiries, etc.
I often wonder why ratepayers will not carry any responsibility for anything Council does or doesn't do? Not just Tauranga but every where. Ratepayers maintain a division between Council and themselves that is not rational.
If a worker commits a grievous mistake (say missing the need for a retaining wall during a building inspection or whatever) then the CE will ultimately carry the responsibility for that even though he was not aware. Why? because the CE employed that worker.
Well who employed the CE? Councillors? Well who elected them? Ratepayers ..and that's where the buck is supposed to stop but it never will. So why is this?
Most ratepayers cant be bothered to vote. Of those that do most haven't a clue and usually vote on name recognition. Disasters and stuff ups occur daily in local government because of the quality of the representatives that at voted in to control what are multi million dollar enterprises. They take their hands off the wheel because they have no idea and then staff, mostly well meaning but just as hopeless, lurch from crisis to crisis.
Then ratepayers cry.. "rinse them" and promptly elect another lot based on name recognition and popularity and repeat the process ad nauseum.
You are the shareholders in your own service company.. those shares are worth $$ so why in heavens name wont you elect competent people to mange your assets and insist that they wrest control from the staff?
From where I sit the responsibility for the shambles in Tauranga rests with the Mayor and Councillors and with those the voted them in and particularly those that could even be bothered to vote because they couldn't manage the energy to take an interest. It is completely just that the ratepayers be hit with a multimillion dollar bill to compensate the victims of this mess.
Will anything change in Tauranga? Maybe the Council will get rinsed next year but another lot will be elected who will be just as useless.
But even the Councillors cannot get access to the information they need from the council staff (or the Mayor).
So how are they supposed to make informed decisions?
Exactly ... Mayor doesnt trust the Councillors? So the Chairman of the board wont trust the other board members in a billion $ enterprise ? Why the hell are the shareholders putting up with this?
Disasters and stuff ups occur daily in local government because of the quality of the representatives that at voted in to control what are multi million dollar enterprises.
Why the hell are the shareholders putting up with this?
In addition to the answer to that question, I want to know why those who have the necessary qualities are not names usually found on the voting papers?
You are the shareholders in your own service company.. those shares are worth $$ so why in heavens name wont you elect competent people to mange your assets and insist that they wrest control from the staff?
That's what voters try to do.
However, the council staff seem to have the upper hand and control the council activities as they see fit - and sometimes restrict who councillors can even talk to.
The power of councils need to be broken but so far National governments haven't focused on that while Labour governments are really pleased with the behaviour of councils.
I suspect the rot set in when the (Labour?) government restricted the elected representatives to only being able to communicate with the Town Clerk (since renamed Council CEO at three times the salary) and not being able to have any interaction at all with other council staff.
Thus the unelected CEO is in the box seat, able to call the shots and hence manipulate the system to suit themselves and their own empire-building desires.
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