It must be an April Fool's Day joke...surely?

Media reported parking wardens will be checking cars' windscreen wiper blades and depth of tyres from April 1, 2014. I don't recall any discussion on this matter. I was surprised to learn from the CEO that we now have an additional parking warden on the streets.

The new vision – yet to be released to the community – is by all accounts a ‘cut the red tape, user-friendly council'.

Here are the facts from council staff:

'Our parking officers will be working alongside the New Zealand Transport Agency and New Zealand Police to raise drivers awareness of their responsibly to ensure the vehicles they are driving are roadworthy. This work aligns with and supports the actions in the Government's Road Safety Strategy 2020 that seeks to improve the safety of vehicles across New Zealand.

The parking officers will be checking tyres as part of their normal business. They have received training from a national expert on how to do this and will be looking for bald or damaged tyres.

They will not be using a tyre tread depth gauge to determine whether a tyre is legal or not.

The role of the officer is to identify tyres that are dangerous and well beyond their useful life. They will not be checking for rust, defect windscreen wipers, cracked lights, etc, they will only be checking for dangerous tyres.

These checks won't be confined to the city centre, they will be undertaken across the city.

Most cities across New Zealand have been undertaking these checks for many years. The fine of $150 is set by central government. The law allows us to issue an infringement notice of $150 per defective tyre, however we will initially only be issuing one $150 fine no matter how many defective tyres are found on a single vehicle.”

Some ratepayers have asked me: 'Is this the thin edge of the wedge?”

It is concerning that incrementally councils are taking on roles and costs which used to be the responsibility of central government.

From consultation to collaboration

Jim Dyers from America promotes participatory democracy and made a presentation to some of the Smart Growth partners on ‘Moving from Consultation to Collaboration'.

Communities building from the bottom up, instead of a top down approach, is something I support and made a submission to Smartgrowth last year.

Council is proposing a small community-matching fund of $50,000 per year for community-led initiatives.

This has gone out for consultation in the draft Annual Plan, which is now open for submissions via phone, email, written or through the council website.