John McDonald’s Invited Opinion Piece

[All candidates for the 2024 By-elections were invited to supply CityWatch NZ with an opinion piece.]

A City Council and its Cartoons….

A Hamilton City Council brochure was put in my mailbox in late 2023. It was typical of many of the brochures from various government authorities in recent years. These brochures contain plenty of cartoons and cartoon characters, though seem to be unbalanced, biased, and missing important information. In this specific brochure, Hamilton City Council was promoting the planned “Safety Improvements” to Te Aroha Street and Ruakura Road in Hamilton East.

When I was employed as a university lecturer, I was teaching future engineers and scientists. Trade-offs, costs, negative impacts, uncertainties, and disadvantages were things I expected my students to consider and honestly report. In the real world, an intervention or proposed solution is rarely going to be all ‘upside’. Hiding the potential ‘downsides’ is not only dishonest and unprofessional, it can also be dangerous.

All city councils in New Zealand should be operating in an open, transparent, democratic, and fair way. City council staff should be providing objective and accurate information. The Local Government Act 2002 states many of these principles.

The Hamilton City Council brochure on the planned “Te Aroha/Ruakura Safety Improvements” project squandered considerable page space on cartoons. This page space could have instead been used to report the main details about this proposed “Safety Improvement” project, including:

  • The installation of over a dozen raised crossings (or many more speed humps from the perspective of the typical motorist). Most of these will be on the side streets though some will be installed on the main roads.
  • The building of a large raised platform for the intersection with Peachgrove road, which alone will likely cost over $500,000 (based on similar installations in the recent past).
  • That the wider project “Eastern Pathways School Link” is expected to cost over $26 million, with NZTA (Waka Kotahi) potentially covering half the cost.
  • The installation of between four and six in-lane bus stops, with each bus stop designed to routinely obstruct the roadway while bus passengers embark, disembark, load, or unload.
  • The removal of carparking space for over 40 cars along Te Aroha Street.

Hamilton City Council has been slow in replying to my request for a digital copy of the full project design, so many of my numbers above are only approximate (though these approximations are still more accurate than the City Council’s cartoon-heavy brochure that was put in my mailbox). Some of this information was reported on this Hamilton City Council webpage.

Do Hamilton City Council staff know that they would face much more public opposition if they were upfront with the public in their brochures about the numbers of new speed humps and the numbers of in-lane bus stops they are planning?

Do the City Council staff know that if they effectively informed the public that this project will cost tens of millions of dollars, they would face more public opposition?

The above cartoon plans from the brochure depicted less than half of the length of the project. The important word “raised” is left out of the “New safe crossing” labels. The cartoon icon for “New safe crossings” (top-left), also does not depict a raised crossing (or the speed hump it will effectively be for most road users). I view this brochure as another example of bad faith behaviour on the part of Hamilton City Council, an example which indicates their intention to mislead and deceive the public.

The Hamilton City Council website has a press release which contains more details of this “Safety Improvements” project. However this press release seems unable to openly acknowledge most of the likely downsides and trade-offs. One part reads…

“Other improvements are:

  • in-lane bus stops (cars must wait behind the bus while it picks up and drops off passengers)
  • reducing the number of lanes along Ruakura Road, between Wairere Drive and Peachgrove Road…”

Not all people in Hamilton are going to consider it an improvement when another major travel route is narrowed and then routinely obstructed by buses. With Hamilton having higher car use rates when compared to other major cities in New Zealand, I suspect the majority of Hamiltonians would not consider these features to be improvements.

Hiding the downsides of a proposed project is not just unprofessional, it is also insulting to the public. It is this type of behaviour from governments and other institutions which undermines their trustworthiness.

The same press release on the Hamilton City Council website describes these roading changes as “A transformational project”. I think most people in Hamilton have had enough of these “transformational” changes to our City.

The assumption of political neutrality from council staff is gone in light of them prioritising promotional cartoons over objective information. The current Code of Conduct that puts restrictions on councillor’s comments, appears intended to create a criticism-free zone to protect staff. In my view creating a culture that suppresses criticism when major decisions are being made, will lead to bad decisions and dysfunctional results.

In my opinion, these uses of cartoons indicates deeper problems within the authorities. One interpretation is that the simplistic cartoons are used because the authorities view the public as stupid, unable to process information like adults, and therefore must be communicated to like small children. Another potentially more disturbing interpretation is that many within City Council are actually thinking about projects in overly-optimistic and oversimplified cartoon-like terms. Childish, utopian thinking might be widespread within City Council. Alternatively, the public relations team might have too much influence or the influence of ‘public relations thinking’ generally has seriously altered the whole organisation’s culture.

Whatever the causes of the promotional cartoons are, it is not just an issue with staff at the Hamilton City Council. From what I can gather, this is an issue with the culture within bureaucracies both nationwide and internationally. They are focusing too much on persuasion, while neglecting their duty to openly provide information. I believe this culture is contributing to a materially worse reality for many people. In Hamilton’s case it is creating a more dysfunctional and hostile city… with prettier marketing brochures that are simply adding insult to injury.

Genuine consultation should deliver more functional infrastructure that meets the community’s actual needs and respects the people within that community. Instead of genuine consultation, we get token consultation activities and cartoon-heavy, promotional brochures.

I was involved in creating CityWatch NZ as a platform to provide a balance of viewpoints, to report on the gritty reality in our cities, and to focus on those serious conversations that involve criticism of the dysfunctions. CityWatch NZ is also a place where the discussion can go beyond the cartoonish and superficial, to investigate the deeper agendas which are causing those dysfunctions.

Your City is not the cartoon utopia on the City Council’s brochures.

What makes you think the politicians, consultants, and bureaucrats who approve of publishing these overly-optimistic cartoons will reliably deliver actual improvements to your City?

Although the next full local body election (scheduled for 2025) will be where we can significantly change the direction of Hamilton City Council, this by-election is a good opportunity to send a strong message into City Council. Help me to continue putting City Council on notice about their wrongdoing.

Thank you for your time and support,

John McDonald

Website: johnforhamilton.substack.com

Email: johnforhamilton@pm.me

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