Six months into his mayoralty, how is Phil Mauger doing as the leader of Christchurch?
Thursday, 6 April 2023
He’s been in charge of the Garden City for nearly six months, so how is Phil Mauger faring in his new job? STEVEN WALTON reports.
ANALYSIS: Six months in, Phil Mauger has navigated a couple of missteps, shown he can change his mind, and scored a mixed bag on his election promises.
Mauger became mayor in October after narrowly beating former health board boss David Meates.
Six months on from the victory, he said one of his highlights of the top job was “getting the rates down below 6%”.
The city was initially facing a rates rise of more than 14%, but that has been reduced to 5.7%.
**READ MORE:
* Battle over Gloucester St creates new leafy pocket park
* Influential locals hope to attract business events to Christchurch
* Mayor holding public meeting to talk annual plan, Three Waters and housing
**
While Mauger called it a highlight, he actually promised an even lower rate rise while campaigning for the mayoralty.
He told council boss Dawn Baxendale that his target was 3 to 4%, and in a Stuff survey he said he wanted it to be “around 4%”.
Mauger addressed these missed targets at a recent public meeting in Avonhead.
“I may have been quoted [as] saying … ‘ah well a piece of piss, we’ll get 3 to 4% [and] that’ll be simple’,” he told the meeting.
“But now we’re seeing inflation at over 7% and the inflation on the construction sector is sitting around 15%,” Mauger said.
Asked about it again this week by Stuff, Mauger reiterated: “I didn’t know the rate of inflation would hit 7%.” He insisted it was not at 7% before the October election, but this is wrong.
Annual inflation peaked at 7.3% in July, and it was at 6.9% in March.
Asked if he regretted the rates promise, Mauger said: “At the time, I thought [3% to 4%] was achievable, I really did, but then other things came into play.”
Mauger also pointed out that a rates rise of 5.7% in Christchurch compared favourably to other councils. Auckland is facing 7% while Wellington is looking at 12.3%.
“We are one of a small number that are down below the rate of inflation,” he said.
Election promises
While a 4% rate rise did not work out, some of Mauger’s other election promises have fared better.
He promised he would establish a roving crew to fix up footpaths. Two crews are due to hit the streets in July, if the council gives the final go-ahead in June.
Councillors unanimously supported the crew late last year.
Mauger has also made progress on cutting bureaucracy.
The council now has one less meeting per month and meetings have less business than they used to, he said.
“A lot of other stuff is getting sorted out in the background,” Mauger said.
“I’m very keen to sort of get everyone in the same tent … when we bring these issues out. The last thing you want to do is for people to see us squabbling in public, there’s nothing to be won there.
“Everyone’s playing the game, and it’s good.”
The occasional misstep
Mauger has had a couple of missteps, though he has been happy to take them on the chin.
Firstly, it emerged in February that Mauger had berated councillor Yani Johanson in a text message for talking to the media, writing: “If you are trying to piss me off you are doing a good job.”
Mauger apologised for the remarks – and when he spoke to Stuff about them, he frankly admitted his choice of words “was not flash”.
Last month, he came under fire from climate protesters after seemingly telling them he had only just started believing in climate change.
A few days later, he had to clarify he had actually believed in it “for yonks”, he just hadn’t been able to “get a nice long sentence in to explain” exactly what he meant.
Another problem Mauger has had to face is his stance on selling assets.
Pre-election, he unequivocally promised that he would not sell any of the city’s companies, like Orion, Lyttelton Port or Christchurch Airport.
Yet he voted to explore the possibility of doing exactly that shortly after the election, when a report recommended a partial sell-down to repay debt and reduce rates.
Changing his mind
Mauger’s apparent asset sales U-turn is not the only change of mind he has had.
A day after he got elected, Mauger hit out at plans to spend $33 million on the roads around the planned Te Kaha stadium.
He soon back-tracked after learning some of the work would fix essential underground infrastructure and the project was largely funded by the Government.
In March, Mauger also helped Transport Minister Michael Wood announce funding for a major revamp of the city’s buses. That funding was based on a business case which Mauger voted against.
Mauger said at the announcement he would “probably not” vote against it now, because he had “learnt a lot more about how buses will make a difference [with reducing emissions]”.
Mauger has also changed his view on being part of Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ), an umbrella group which represents the interests of regional, city, and district councils.
He wanted to quit LGNZ in 2021, but when Auckland abruptly departed last month, Mauger said he was disappointed. He remarked: “It is better to be in the tent and try to change it”.
Support
Mauger said he has a “fantastic team” around him at council.
One of his campaign staffers, Boyd Becker, joined as his principal adviser shortly after the election.
Mauger was also complimentary of support from his wife, Chrissy. “The mayoress is a very understanding woman,” he said.
Councillor Sam MacDonald has also been a helpful ally.
MacDonald has taken the reins of the only major council committee in Mauger’s simplified governance structure, the finance committee.
And when Mauger faced questions about the council’s budget at a meeting in February, it was MacDonald who jumped in to help answer.
Then at a public meeting last week MacDonald clarified one of Mauger’s comments, specifically addressing a journalist as he did so.
Later on in the meeting there was a question about urban design. MacDonald joked: “I would let Phil speak, but there’s media in the room, so I won’t on this one.”
Balance of power
Despite being mayor, Mauger has not been able to do whatever he wants.
Many council decisions require majority support – and that’s something he has not always had.
He wanted to start paying fees to councillors who work as directors on council company boards, but did not have support.
He also could not find enough allies when he wanted to give high priority status to a swathe of roading projects.
Mauger has also publicly gone against his own council on some issues.
He called the excess water use charge “unfair” and has criticised raised safety bumps at intersections.
He also hit out at spending $1.4 million on a planned revamp of Gloucester St in the central city.
In that case, Mauger did flex his mayoral muscles. He asked council boss Dawn Baxendale to pause the work – and she did.
Mauger said he sometimes struggled to understand council staff.
“In most cases [the staff] explain to me why they’ve done something and sometimes we agree to disagree,” he said.
“It gets a bit frustrating, but you don’t go and have a go at the staff, there’s nothing to be won by doing that.”
Mauger insisted he did still get on well with staff.
“There’s no screaming matches, nothing like that. It’s all good, we’re all professional,” he said.
What lies ahead?
Mauger told Stuff he now needed to bring council spending under control.
Sounding like a broken record from his campaign trail, he declared: “We’ve really got to cut our cloth”.
The council has taken some steps to reduce costs in it latest budget. It slashed its capital budget by more than $100m and put a hiring freeze in place for about 20 roles. But councillors opted against making service cuts.
Mauger said the next council budget in 2024 would be “our pivotal moment … that’s going to make or break us.”
Next year’s budget is a major deal. It will plan out 10 years of spending – the council only develops this type of budget once a term.
So what does Mauger want from it?
He says he wants to be “very hard” on spending, and for the rate rise to be in line with, or less than, inflation.
He does not want to continue on with “business as usual and be struggling all the way”, he said.
So how will he, as he puts it, cut the cloth?
When Mauger met with council boss Dawn Baxendale during the election, he said he wanted to reduce services or stop activities to enable lower rates.
Mauger said this week that staff would outline what the organisation’s essential, untouchable services were – and then what councillors “can play with”.
During the last big budget, councillors did not listen to staff “as hard as I thought we should”, Mauger said, though he believed things would be different this time.
“Everyone knows it’s a cost of living crisis … [so] it’ll be a lot easier to convince other councillors that ‘wow, this is really a lot tighter’.”