Mental wards

File under: politics, Wellington

With all the consultation going on recently, I would have missed the significance of the council's Representation Review if it wasn't for a post by Zippy Gonzales. I haven't had a chance to form an opinion on the merits of wards vs at-large systems, but one of the proposed options seems crazy to me: the amalgamation of five wards into three. The consultation document (347kB PDF) makes it clear that wards should group together "communities of interest" which it defines as "grouping[s] of the population, on a geographical basis, which has social and economic coherence". So I ask you: what does Te Aro have in common with Makara!?!

I realise that simple geographic boundaries can never perfectly define "communities of interest", but some of these changes just seem perverse. From an urban form point of view, which has a major influence on local government issues such as transport and building regulations, it's bizarre to group together the highrises of Lambton Quay with the quarter-acres of Karori and the windmillphobic imitation farmers (and a few real farmers) of Makara.

It's clear that some changes need to be made. For instance, the soaring population of the Lambton Ward means that voters there are increasingly under-represented. But some of the variations on the 5-ward option make much more sense. For example, options 2 and 3 both shift Wadestown to Onslow/Western and Roseneath to Eastern, emphasising the "inner urban" character of the Lambton ward.

As usual, I've come to this late: public input closes today. If the arguments above don't convince you to submit against the 3-ward option, consider this: in that option, the most over-represented ward would be the Northern one. And that's Peter Dunne territory.