President David opened the meeting at 7.29.
There were 13 members present.
Apologies: Phillipa and Phil (who's recovering from a cold)
Club announcements;
David J Tonight's ERKs packing is cancelled as all the ERKs have been packed!
Peter Don forewarned us that there would be an evening meeting on 5th October to which members and spouses were invited to Christine Fernyhough's home to see her collection of NZ art.
Sargeant's session: Singer Margaret Urlich, who died recently was farewelled sadly and speaker Trevor Mallard who's resigned and is off to Ireland was farewelled gladly.
David was disappointed that he wasn't able to fine Greg as Kiwibank, of which he's a director, has now been nationalised.
Three minute speaker: Actually it's good to have this part of the meeting reintroduced!
Ted van Arkle told us of his three years on the Auckland Regional Council Transport Board - the predecessor to AT. His main memory is of the difficulty of dealing with the about ten local councils and the government to get anything done. However during that time a fair amount of rail infrastructure, including Newmarket railway station, were completed. When he resigned he was given a model of a railway carriage. Nowadays if anybody resigns from AT they would be given an orange cone - if there are any not deployed blocking traffic!
The Speaker: Desley Simpson, council member for Orakai .Desley is standing to be re-elected for her third term as our representative on council.
In passing we were told that she is a member of Auckland East Rotary Club.
She believes that there are a of of unhappy people out there, with their mental health having been compromised by covid and the associated lockdowns.
"There is a lot wrong with the council", which is a pretty frank admission for a council member of six years' standing. Operationally AT has been a failure and the CCOs need to have a closer council oversight.
Desley claimed that a committee that she chairs has saved ratepayers well over $100 million in annual expenditure.
She noted the improvements in Tamaki Drive, raising its level by half a metre to defer its flooding as a result of storms and sea level rise, plus saving Colin Maiden park as an open space rather being built upon. Additionally the north end of Portland Rd and the adjacent open space is being redeveloped to reducing flooding.
Ms Simpson made the point that the local boards have a lot of authority. Confusingly Parnell is in the Waitemata board area so we'll have to have some of the candidates along to spread their good word, especially if the conspiracy theorists are right and there are a lot of seriously weird people out there who want to take over local authorities!
Finally she said that many of the other councillors tend to be politically left of centre that to get any resources for "rich' Oraki was always a battle so she put down her successes to being able to work across the political boundaries. Negotiation rather than brute force and ignorance achieved the best results.
Ms Simpson is an accomplished speaker with a good story to tell.
The club had the opportunity of hearing Brown and Beck, the sabre and the rapier. You pays your money, you takes your choice.
Now we need to hear Collins then we will have heard all the major contenders for our vote in October.
Additionally we need to hear some of the candidates for our local board.
