Waiheke Radio two minute for Local Board

I’m Andy Spence.
I came to Waiheke because I fell in love with this island community.
Most of you know me as the Whakanewha Park ranger but I'm also involved with environmental groups, sports, the arts, the choral society and the theatre. I have an honours degree in Zoology and taught science for several years and spent 5 years on conservation planning with DoC.
So I've got a practical and scientific approach to planning, and I understand how to work with our environment to make it sustainable.
I stand for putting decision making back in your hands after all you're the ones who will be affected. This is genuine democracy. Our island has been pushed and pulled in directions we don’t like by those who don’t live here and we'd begun to believe that this situation was all we could expect.
Well I want to change that - and most of my fellow candidates feel the same way. By voting for those of us who from day one will establish a strong voice for this island; you’ll be taking the first step to a strong and self reliant community.
Imagine how it will feel to be in charge of our own destinies. Imagine how secure we’ll feel when we know that the future is firmly in our own hands, to resolve our issues in our own way, in our own time.
We have already shown how well our ideas and initiatives can work. Waiheke is becoming famous for it's determination to avoid the pitfalls of quick fix solutions and bad policies imposed from afar. I see a time when communities all over the world look to us for inspiration in sustainable development as they too struggle to remain viable in a changing world.
This island is blessed with a vast range of brilliant people offering brilliant ideas and the board will be calling on them for expert advice rather than off island consultants. Let's secure a future in which our ideas get a chance to be properly heard, and better still, implemented.
I'm a good listener and I encourage participation. I have patience and an appreciation of diversity - working with nature requires great patience and forward planning. This Board needs someone that invites interaction and understands possibilities. I have demonstrated these qualities over many years. I want to be on this Board.

Statistics on Waiheke Voting

Waiheke Community Board

This table(s) below describe the election of community board members for the last three local elections.

2001 2004 2007
Number of community board positions 5 5 5
Average number of electors per community board position 1,041 1,105 1,175
Number of candidates in the election 17 9 9
Percentage of community board members re-elected 0% 20% 80%
Number of enrolled electors 5,204 5,523 5,876
Number of actual voters 3,349 3,486 3,367
Percentage of turnout for the election 64% 63% 57%

Appreciation for Andy Spence from the Horse Riders

On behalf of the Waiheke Island Riding Club I would like to wish you farewell as Head Ranger of Whakanewha Regional Park.

Thank you for the wonderful work you have done at the park over the past years.
We appreciate the good working relationship you have established with the local riding community, your willingness to listen to and accommodate the needs of riders within the park.

We are very happy to be continuing this relationship with Dan.

We wish you well in your future endeavours.


Warmest Regards


Katrina Powell
Secretary

Bottom up Democracy

I stand for bottom up democracy. I see elected representatives as facilitators of the community process. I will promote the building of social fabric and community by encouraging and eliciting open communication, not concentrated on issues but about building a strong empowered community and neighbourhoods where we feel included. This is a way in which communities develop caring for each other. The issues become much less important when we feel we are empowered and can then be much more easily resolved.

As a representative an important part of my job is to know what we need to focus on, to have the big picture of where we could proceed. The local board needs to be partners with the island in a democratic process. I do not want to be captured by interest groups or specific issues but I will be someone that works to take the needs of the community and present them to the council in order for council to understand the need for it to develop more appropriate policy and plans.

This requires someone with the ability to listen who can encourage participation. Someone with patience and tolerance for difference. Someone who can invite interaction and understand possibilities. I have demonstrated these qualities over the years.

Whakanewha over the years and bits of life

blog slideshow - slide show

Len Brown on local boards

Len Brown says we will retain local identity in the local boards

July 2010

One of the biggest issues I hear from people around the region is whether their local community will retain its local identity in the supercity. People are worried all the money and power will shift to another part of town. We cannot let that happen and if I am elected mayor it won’t.
I have committed to rotating the Council meeting around each of the current council areas. It is important to me that the new Auckland Council stays in touch with local communities around the region.
Unfortunately many Aucklanders are still in the dark about what their local boards will be involved in. I have released this policy to give assurance that under my leadership, local boards will retain the grunt they need to deliver for their communities.
Local boards should be involved in planning and policy related to their communities. They should develop long term community plans and annual plans, as well as contributing to regional policy-making and giving effect to regional plans. They should then develop local policy within the regional framework in areas like, for example, dog control, gambling and gaming machines, licensing of cafes, bars and liquor outlets, brothels, and the development of town centres.
Local boards should be responsible for local decisions on local roads, footpaths, pedestrian zones and bus stops, speed limits for local roads, public transport, crime prevention (where CCTV cameras should be sited, for example), community engagement, beautification schemes, building consents, local economic development, animal control, environmental protection, local parks, recreation and sports facilities, libraries and pools, community houses and advisory services, town centre promotion, galleries and museums, beaches, camping grounds, liquor licensing, and more. I also want local boards to be involved in resource management hearings for their areas.
I will ensure Local boards have adequate support to get on with their business. I don’t want them to waste time arguing with the Council over budgets and plans. I will be sending a very clear message to the CEO and management of the Auckland Council, Auckland Transport and the other CCOs, and councillors that local boards are the heart of democracy in Auckland and should not be fighting for scraps from the Council’s table.
The first Auckland Council will set the values and direction of our region for many years to come. We’ve got to get it right. I want to make sure that local communities are valued and protected in the new structure.

Waiheke Wind Power Wise Site

This is the site for Waiheke Wind an upcoming initiative to provide wind power to Waiheke Island. Have a look at the site and there you can register your interest in becoming a customer. Registering as a customer is an important step in supporting this initiative.

The Official Government Election Site - My profile

You can use this link to visit my profile on the official government web site

Growing a community is like growing trees. It takes time.

Sustainable development is like gardening, continual growth is like a cancer; no tree grows forever. We must always be ready to abandon old methods, plant new ideas, take out the dead wood for compost, pull out the weeds, fertilise with new ideas and prepare for winter.

Waiheke's future has to be placed in the hands of those who will live in that future. The vague and contradictory plans that issue from those with no understanding of this community and the way it works have to be set aside as valueless.

While other parts of the world are facing increasing environmental chaos, Waiheke is managing to move away from such folly. We have made a brilliant start. Now we have to develop our ideas further.

No intelligent person would deny that globally our current situation is unsustainable. The world's population is growing exponentially. We have been living on the stored oil energy wealth of billions of years and this will become in progressively shorter supply. Our lifestyles are wasteful and polluting. But, on Waiheke we have the chance to change this and become a world leader in sustainable development. This island is blessed with a vast range of brilliant people offering brilliant ideas. Let's secure a future in which those ideas get a chance to be properly heard, and better still, implemented.

We in this community have already shown how well our ideas and initiatives can work. Waiheke is becoming famous for it's determination to avoid the pitfalls of quick fix solutions and bad policies imposed from afar. I want to see a time when communities all over the world look to us for inspiration as they too try to remain viable and sustainable in a changing world.

Finished work at Whakanewha Regional Park

Yesterday Friday 13th I finished work at Whakanewha after 15 years. A poignant day for me. Dan was so kind and organised a leaving party for me at the Lazy Lounge. Old friends from many years were there. Dan said that I would be sorely missed, except by the rats and gave me a framed picture of the park which is now hanging in the entrance at home. Mike Lee the ARC chairman found the time to come and present me with a beautiful book on the Waitakere Ranges.
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A lovely send off, thank you everyone who spoke and who came to celebrate the achievements at Whakanewha.

I hope to be able to capture something of these achievements and apply them to the whole island. Our island deserves the prestige that is accorded to other great heritage areas. And we need to care for it so that it's beauty is not spoilt in the future. Those that live here are its custodians and its guardians.

My 150 Words for the Election Paper

As Whakanewha Park Ranger and Waiheke resident for 16 years, I know and love this community and am committed to see it develop in ways that equally benefit the community and the world we live in. I bring a practical approach to planning, and understand how we must work with our environment to become truly sustainable.

I can maximise opportunities for Waiheke after many years experience working within the public sector (including extensive planning in environmental management with DoC). I have a science degree, worked eight years as a science teacher and developed a successful business. I am involved with many community groups - music, sporting, cultural and environmental.

The board team must listen to the community’s ideas and needs and ensure our voice is heard so that Super-City plans support community aspirations. To this end I will call on the knowledge and experience of this island’s many talented people.

Gulf News Article of 5 August 2010

Ranger moving on from dotterels, bellbirds and happy campers

After more than a decade managing and developing Whakanewha’s Regional Park into a well-used and successful island institution, Andy Spence is leaving his post as one of the park’s two rangers and standing for election to Waiheke’s first Local Board. He says he almost stood at the last election and, three years on, he feels he has finished what he wanted to do at Whakanewha. It’s a track record that has included making it possible for the endangered wading dotterels to successfully breed on the sands at Whakanewha and a predator eradication programme which enabled bellbirds to be released into the wild in the park earlier this year. Five birds are known to be still feeding there regularly. “The vision I had has come to fruition and it has taken a lot of skills,” says the park ranger whose science background includes an honour’s degree in zoology and an early career in secondary school teaching. Before coming to Whakanewha, he worked with the Department of Conservation in Wanganui for seven years, including time developing the first conservation management strategy there, and he says he has had “a lot to do with paperwork” in his career. On the island, he developed the park’s first management plan, which included the popular camp site, and worked with the community to get the park acknowledged and used. Dozens of people have worked on the community task force contributing to the park and the camp site is now recognised as one of the top camp sites in the country. “It is certainly a triumph,” he says. Over the years the park has been developed – with a lot of weed management – from a downgraded piece of ‘potential’ into what is now acknowledged as one of the loveliest parks in the region, he says. As a local board member, he says he would want to see the city council have respect and ‘a listening’ for the Waiheke local board and that the board would have the ear of a council “that knows that the local board has the people of the community behind it”. “The Auckland election will be the most important one most of us will ever see,” he says. “All across the Auckland region, communities will be facing changes and upheavals. I think those of us on Waiheke know the challenges we face pretty well and already have a fair idea of what needs doing.” While many people have expressed justifiable concerns about the restructuring of Auckland, especially in view of the many issues still left unresolved, or at least unexplained, he takes a more optimistic view. “I know the Super City restructuring is unsettling for many of us and we may well find ourselves having to work with things that are not perfect for us, but here at community level we are stuck with it and have to give it our best efforts to make it work. “Besides, when was the last time you met someone who thinks Auckland is fantastically well run under the present system? I believe that Waiheke has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show just how well we can run our own affairs and how loud and clear our voices can be. This little island has shown, time and time again through voter turn out, that we are the most politically engaged part of Auckland. The inevitable confusion that will follow the upcoming election will leave large amounts of political power up for the taking. If Waiheke can bring a big enough bucket to the party then I think we’d be amazed how much of it we can bring home. “We have an extraordinary range of experts on the island. I know we want something out of this that is sustainable for the future. So far, the process towards the Super City has been developed on a basis of economics and it would be up to the board working as a team to add to that agenda,” he says. “We want this community, which is just so vibrant; which has so many world leaders and groups, to move forward in a sustainable way.” He said it would be important that current regional council chairman and Rocky Bay resident Mike Lee had the support of the community in his bid for a seat on the new Auckland Council to represent the Gulf and central city, which makes up the Waitemata Ward. “That would help for our voice to be heard in the deliberations,” he says. Despite the concerns over the Super City, he says he believes there is a genuine desire for communities to take more responsibility for their own direction. “That is what I am going to work on; that is the avowed intent and that is what we want to take with us. It is a positive opportunity. “If we can demonstrate that we are able to present and promote local democracy, we will be worthy of receiving further delegations.” He describes himself as one who likes the practical results and says the board will be a test of the elected group’s ability to take useful note of all of the opinions of the island’s groups. “I wouldn’t want to pretend I know all the answers,” he says. The long-time park ranger also has a lengthy and memorable involvement in local performing arts. “For me, the arts in all their many forms are what the human side of Waiheke is all about. You see the sun come up on this place each morning and what can you do but paint, sculpt, play, or in my own case, dance and sing. “We are at a moment in time with huge and life changing resource and economic challenges worldwide. Waiheke has the opportunity to demonstrate to the world or at least New Zealand how to develop new ways of living sustainably with respect for our environment. “And the beach is only a five minute walk away.” • Liz Waters