LEE VANDERVIS 

Core services must be optimised

Age 70

Occupation Dunedin city councillor

Running for mayor and council

How should your council balance the need for infrastructure spending with concerns about rates rises?

Better contract delivery of Dunedin core services is needed to balance out-of-control rates, debt and bureaucracy. The DCC nine-year plan proposes rates rises many times the rate of inflation, plus billion-dollar-plus debt for most of the nine years, costing $1million PER WEEK just in interest! By cancelling $100-plus million carbon-zero and cycleways budgets and a $94m new landfill, we can optimise core services – drainage, sewerage, more parking and better road maintenance without raising rates or debt.

How do you envisage working with others in council – especially those who don’t agree with you?

Treating all councillors equally by abolishing name-only standing committees with chairmanships will reduce tensions and help enable consensus decisions. I will use mayoral powers to keep agendas free of world and national political issues, shorten and clarify with summaries using AI and get consensus through better information on just local core services decisions. Whether councillors agree with my wider political views or not should not be an issue.

What are your thoughts around the role of local and central government in NZ? What could be improved?

Dunedin needs to be free of the ORC. We need to return Port Chalmers and harbourside land to Dunedin, land that Dunedin ancestors reclaimed and developed for over a century before it was gifted to the ORC in 1989. Otago Regional Council rates add ever increasing cost but little value for Dunedin, and are unaffordable. A Dunedin unitary council free of the ORC has been talked about for years, recently by the PM and Shane Jones, but needs a strong mayoral push to make it happen.

What style of leadership is required for the city?

Decisive leadership is needed with a focus on core services, treating all councillors equally, not allowing waffling, virtue-signalling and central government political posturing in DCC meetings. As mayor I would ensure no-nonsense meeting behaviour, clarity on proposed budget and operational cost information, raise Dunedin’s profile nationally and internationally, attracting investment, streamlining DCC consents/compliance and freeing Dunedin of ORC duplicate bureaucracy.

What has the council got right and what are your priorities for change?

DCC has recently employed some highly skilled council companies directors and this year we received our first company dividend for a decade – $11m to offset rates increases, which I have pushed hard for. My priorities for change include better-value contracting, freedom from ORC rates and compliance costs, reduction of DCC paperwork using AI and clearer DCC focus on core services, resulting in the ability to control rates, debt and bureaucracy.