A commentary by Bill Demeter

An American politician was once asked her opinion of another politician and she quickly replied; “You can’t make a thoroughbred horse out of 2000 pounds of horseshit”.

Sadly this definition could easily be applied to the current elected city councillors, at least seven of them.  It seems over the last five years it has been mistake after mistake after mistake.  The list of fiascos gets longer and sadder.  The 24% social housing rent increase, the 17.0 million dollar Henderson bail out, the secret music hall plans for the arts centre, the money losing 4.0+ million dollar Ellerslie flower show purchase, the obscene Marryatt pay raises (apparently he earns more than President Obama), the high number of ‘Public Excluded’ council meetings and now, the increasing intervention by central government because of the inept leadership of our Mayor and the ‘deer in headlights’ decisions being made by a majority of elected councillors.

It appears as if we have only two options.  (1) Replace the whole lot with commissioners or (2) endure what we have until 2013.  Let’s look at these options.

Option #1 Replace the elected Councillors.  Central government replaced elected councillors with commissioners at Environment Canterbury (Ecan) under dubious, at best, premises.  As a result, those of us who pay Ecan rates do so without representation.  Taxation without representation is illegal in democracies but obviously is not in New Zealand.  If the central government does this again with the dysfunctional city council, however incompetent, will give far greater power to central government and increases our taxation (Ecan and City rates) without democratically elected representation.  We also lose good councillors (Chen, Livingstone, Johanson, Buck, Broughton, Carter and hopefully Beck) because of the antics of the bad councillors (Parker, Button, Keown, Reid, Wells, Corbett).  It also allows Tony Marryatt to escape untouched to continue his backroom ways.

 Option #2 Endure what we have until 2013 Elections. This is the preferred option for many reasons.  First and foremost, it will give the residents of Christchurch the opportunity to get rid of councillors such as Parker, Button, Keown, Reid, Wells, Corbett and elect councillors who actually believe they work for the people of Christchurch.  Since Marryatt’s contract comes up shortly after this election the new elected council says; “Good bye and good luck” and Marryatt becomes nothing more than a horrible memory.

The danger in this option is that there might be some truth that voters have short memories and the current gang gets re-elected.  If fair play and wasteful use of ratepayer monies remain in the voters mind come election time then “The gang that couldn’t shot straight” will get tossed.

Just imagine; we, the residents, just might get our city back and councillors we can trust.