Friday 23 July 2010

John Banks’s mega-money grab [update 2]

So now we’re getting some idea about the nature of the big plan is in extending the authority of John Banks’s council from Tuakau to Wellsford: it’s not just to give planners even more unbridled power over the lives of even more good folk, it’s to extend John Banks proven super-revenue-gathering powers from bus land and parking fines to 1 million people instead of just a paltry 250,000.  $20 million gathered from 430,00 people by 80 revenue-gathering traffic wardens, with $12 million more expected to be gathered by the 30 new pieces of filth about to be appointed by John Banks. Now when you’re monarch of 1.4 million, with your super-revenue-gathering imposing walletectomies on unsuspecting drivers, that would be over $100 million, and counting.

Who needs to rein in rates when you can always just keep whacking the motorist, already harassed by driving on roads that don’t work, through shortcuts infested with speed humps, on to motorways whose on-ramps no longer allow you to get on, to places where you’re not allowed to park.

Who needs to rein in rates at all when your own supporters cheer if you manage to keep your spending blow-out below ten percent every year. “Hurray!” “Great stuff'!” they hurrah while the pepple who try to pay them go to the wall.

Not bad for a mayor who campaigned on a platform of stopping rate rises altogether, and who’s raised them every year he’s been in office—while raising the revenue gathering every year just to try to keep pace.

There’s a word for a thieving arsehole like that.  And I think I just used two of them.

UPDATE 1: Owen McShane points out that everty study ever done demonstrates that bus lanes don’t drive people out of their cars, they drive them out of the city. [Hat tip Leighton Smith]

UPDATE 2: Oh crikey. Who wants mayors of a 1.4 million-people city to start unveiling “visions”! Given the size of the egos involved in doing a job that should just involve little more than making sure the sewers work, you can just about do the back-of-the-envelope calculation yourself, can’t you:

“Visions” + ego = millions and millions of dollars of your money down the drain.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

is auckland council thrying to do the same stuff that Tasman District Council are, in that they are charging development levies for subdivsions and then when people go to build on the section which has had its development levy paid already, charging the new amount, and calling it a contribution, and stating that the othjer fee was a levy, and therefore is an entirely different charge?
The whole local govt system is one very large rort

Anonymous said...

Had a discussion about this with house guests last night. The consensus was Auckland will be controlled by a gang. And a much more dangerous one than Black Power or Mongrel Mob.

All this traffic fine business, the graduated license system (BTW it is near impossible for a youngster to pass a full licence test now and the cost is horrific) is not to increase road safety as we all know - it is purely to increase revenue for the gang.

FAIRFACTS MEDIA said...

Who needs to go to Auckland for shopping and entertainment when you have Albany and Orewa.
It is such a pain to drive in Auckland that I go there as little as possible.