Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau said yesterday's meeting had been "very productive". Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Wellington mayor Tory Whanau is meeting with Local Government Minister Simeon Brown as her council faces the threat of government intervention.
The council has to find a way to fill a huge budget hole, after a decision not to sell its airport shares.
Councillors met behind closed doors on Wednesday to discuss how its Long-term Plan (LTP) could be amended.
After councillors had previously called for government intervention and expressed a lack of faith in the mayor, most councillors presented a more united front yesterday, telling the media they were confident they could find a way forward.
Ben McNulty said there had been an agreement around the table from councillors of what they now needed to look at.
"I would probably classify it as the most productive meeting we've had as city councillors in this triennium," he said.
"I think there was a lack of ego in the room for once."
Most items would be on the table, but water funding was one of the big exceptions.
McNulty said a plan had not yet been formed, but an approach on a path going forward would be taken to the minister.
He maintained that any government intervention from there would be straight politics.
Iona Pannett said the council had not actually broken the law.
"I've been a councillor for a long time, we've had lots of big arguments, this is not the first or the last one," she said.
"We have not broken the law. There's actually no reason for intervention.
"We've made a call and now we're going to make another call," she said.
Meanwhile, Ray Chung would rather have an election than government intervention. He has already put his name forward for the job.
He was not convinced having a Crown observer would solve the problem.
"What would it result in if this observer came and sat at the back of the room and sort of looked at how things went? What does that actually change?"
Whanau said yesterday's meeting had been "very productive".
She said the vote against selling airport shares meant the council was now moving forward to develop a LTP amendment that would address it insurance risk due to earthquakes and climate change disasters.
"A bottom line for me as we move forward is that we address this insurance challenge without increasing rates further. I also want to assure the public that, as we go through this process, I do not intend to cut projects that are critical for our city's growth and sustainability. For me, that means protecting our social housing, and continuing funding for water and key climate initiatives," Whanau said.
"We agreed that we must address our insurance risk. An important step towards this is to reduce our debt consistently over the course of the next 10 years so that we achieve $500m of debt headroom in the case of a disaster. We will be working together to identify where these reductions will come from."
She said councillors had a "shared commitment" to "investigate the sale of ground leases and carbon credit holdings to form the basis of a fund (or other insurance mechanism) that can offer both returns and form of self-insurance to council and would grow over time".
Whanau said the previous proposal to create a self-insurance fund was widely supported by councillors, even if the sale of airport shares was not.
"None of the decisions ahead of us are easy, but a majority of councillors and pouiwi support this approach and are committed to doing what is right for our city."
She said she was looking forward to Thursday's meeting with Brown.
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