Responses to our Candidates Questionnaire for the Christchurch City Local Body Elections

At the 2004 local elections the number of councillors were reduced from 25 to 13 and standing committees scrapped. Since then we have found it has become increasingly difficult to have a say on improvements to cycling infrastructure. The top-down corporate style of governance practised by bthe current council seems quite anti-democratic compared to more bottom-up style of decision making of the past leaving us feeling that many of this council seem to be out of touch with their communities. Things such as how finance was found for things like the Elleslie flower show, the Henderson properties and motorways extensions but not for community groups and active transport infrastructure seem to further reinforce this view.  It hasn't helped that the budget figures produced by staff on both the LTCCP and Annual Plan have been contradictory and difficult to analyse. SPOKE experts conclude that the 2009 LTCCP cut funding for cycling infrastructure to 20% of the original budget, and the latest Annual Plan had virtually nothing in it for cycling.

To try to guage the views of the candidates in the upcoming local body elections we devised an online survey and emailed an invitation to as many candidates as we could to respond to it.  Attached is the responses of the 55 who took us up on this offer.  These are verbatim responses reproduced as written by them.

We hope this gives you some guidance as to how you vote. What ever way that is we hope you will consider candidates who want honest and transparent democracy in the governance of our city.