Local area the big loser in funding equity push

The Devonport-Takapuna Local Board area stands to lose millions of dollars of council funding under a financial redistribution taking effect from as early as 2025.

The area is expected to be among the worst hit by an accelerated shift to “equity funding” across Auckland’s 21 local boards.

Briefings about the impact have begun, after Mayor Wayne Brown moved to bring forward changes previously expected to take 10 or more years. He wants the new regime in operation within three years.

Local representatives are alarmed that North Shore facilities will be neglected and that local ratepayers will be left paying more for less. “This is just a socialist-imposed system that is going to screw this board over more than any other in Auckland,” Devonport-Takapuna Local Board member George Wood warned at the first of two workshop presentations by council staff this month.

Board member Gavin Busch predicted community anger would lead to calls to separate from Auckland Council. “All you’re doing is punishing people for living in an area and for being rich, but they’re not,” he said.

Existing funding allocations are based on the number of assets each local board has, ahead of population and weightings according to deprivation. The proposed new model would have an 80/15/5 percentage split, according to population, deprivation and land area, respectively.

Board members, including Wood, said they were not against moves towards greater equity, but not at the cost of running down public assets built up over decades on the North Shore. These include costly-to-maintain coastal and heritage assets, along with existing and ageing community facilities.

Board chair Toni van Tonder said: “The hard part for our community is we will be paying a lot more into this [through rates] but getting less out. That’s an incredibly difficult thing for people to stomach.”

The board is framing what van Tonder told the Observer was a “strong response” to the equity changes.

Equity funding would leave the board facing some “pretty grim prospects”, she said. “We’ll see our facilities start to fall into disrepair or we’ll be forced to sell assets that we can no longer afford to maintain.”

Busch said high property values did not mean people had high incomes, with many struggling to pay rates. And people were not seeing infrastructure spend in the area, he said, citing flooding issues in the Wairau catchment and the lack of a proper stormwater system in intensifying Bayswater.

With a little over 3.3 per cent of the city’s population, the board area sits well above council’s equity baseline.

For the three years starting from 20242025, its current funding is 20 per cent above baseline for projected operating expenses and 60 per cent above for capital expenses. Around half of Auckland’s boards are well below the baseline.

Redistribution would see limited or no future funding rises for Devonport-Takapuna.

Three-year funding models that board members were shown include one where the area would receive only an extra $2 million above the current $22.7 million in operating expenses, the second-lowest lift of all boards. The budgets of eight other boards would be boosted between $10 and $21 million. Other models showed slight drops in funding for Devonport-Takapuna.

In another indicative model, Upper Harbour received a capital spending boost of $13.5 million to $18.2m, while Devonport-Takapuna’s existing $13m only rose by $1.8 to $14.8m.

The council officer leading the equity project, Jestine Joseph, earlier told board members equity funding might be expanded in future to cover what council organisations such as Auckland Transport had to spend locally.

The equity working party’s recommendation will be subject to a vote by Auckland councillors. With around half of them from areas set to benefit from changes, it seems unlikely to be overturned.

At a second equity-funding workshop last week, the board talked about working with North Shore councillors to lobby for the area.

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