Thanks and praise flow for the 'fixit' mayor from unlikely quarters as he passes his first big financial milestone with a budget approved for public feedback next year
Wayne Brown had a bad moment - a bad hour or two - on Thursday when he talked too much and spooked the sharemarket, but he had a good day.
Despite his ill-advised comments on Auckland Airport going to the market for a capital raise, Brown should have taken heart from the comments of others around the Auckland Council decision-making table during a seven hour budget discussion.
Not only did the mayor's rushed, first economic plan for the city's finances get passed by 20 votes to 1 to its next stage of going out to public consultation, but he could bask in thanks and praise from a variety of unlikely sources.
It had, he said, taken a lot of hard work, to get the budget that aims to fill a $295m hole in the council's books together at speed during a cost of living crisis.
Heavens, he'd even had to work at the weekend.
Acknowledging past media and public criticism of the hours of his working week, Brown told councillors his top advisers had been huddled with him last weekend finalising the numbers.
"I've had some rather negative publicity about my apparently short hours, but a wet Sunday afternoon in there with them was valuable."
Brown mentioned the weekend overtime in response to effusive praise from councillor Christine Fletcher. "You are the first who has given us clarity," she said. "You are leading the charge from the front and everyone is entitled to certainty. We are getting much more alignment around policy and funding."
Fletcher had felt excluded at times under previous mayor Phil Goff, so her comments were heavy with implication. But she also praised Brown's mayoral office staff for "accommodating the sensitivities that some of us felt" around new direction letters for council controlled businesses. "I think we are coming into a new age of maturity."
Brown's big meeting wasn't all bouquets. A range of councillors raised issues with his spending cuts or revenue raising plans, but voted for the package at this point solely to get it out for public response, and some councillors did so because they had always taken that approach. So the 20 to 1 (Josephine Bartley of Maungakiekie ward demurred, saying the package was inequitably targeting community groups) vote was not the endorsement it might have seemed.
But what was striking was how many councillors, of varying political stripes, offered thanks and praise for Brown for his readiness over the past weeks of briefings and drafts and workshops to amend his plan to take into account others' views.
That is not necessarily the image Brown has crafted for himself in the past or during his election campaign. He often spoke of people being "told" what would happen (everyone from central government to individual councillors and officials) and portrayed his future mayoralty as one of his agenda being driven through despite likely objections.
'Progressive' councillors, who would have supported Brown's opponent Efeso Collins in the mayoral campaign, offered thanks and support.
Shane Henderson, the Labour councillor from Waitakere, spoke of his excitement at the role Brown had given him liaising with Tātaki Auckland Unlimited, the economic development and events business owned by the council.
"It's an honour and a highlight of my career to work on it," he said.
The collegial Brown answered: "I'm glad I chose well."
He almost verbally pinched himself. "Do I sense a little bit, a specimen, of joy among us?"
A City Vision councillor from Puketāpapa, Julie Fairey, also thanked Brown for his kind words after he commended her work dealing with new community advisory panels. She did not support the budget overall as there was a lack of information. However she had not been able, yet, to pull together a viable alternative, she said. "The mayor has already made a number of welcome improvements."
From the chair, Brown frequently responded to budget criticisms with a "fair enough" and offers to look at the councillors' issues.
Another Labour councillor, Lotu Fuli of Manukau said his proposal "is quite different to what we saw at the start, so I appreciate that you have listened and taken advice."
She did reveal Brown had asked councillors at some point in their series of private meetings on the budget to raise their hands in favour of "a certain figure" of rate increase but that had not progressed.
Richard Hills, another Collins and Goff supporter, queried a list of budget measures but noted "the community and media probably wanted blood on the floor and a whole lot of [disputed] votes" at the meeting.
"But today is about getting the community to have its say."
He was "extremely happy" that Brown had listened to feedback on making the cuts to council-run early childhood centres open for public feedback, rather than his original plan to let council staff close them under delegated authority.
Hills did challenge Brown's implication in his budget remarks that the mayor had inherited a financial basket case. Even the Reserve Bank had not foreseen such high inflation and interest rates six months ago when the current financial year's budget was framed. "We could not have known the level prices were going up."
Another Manukau councillor Alf Filipaina also ticked Brown off for a slight on his predecessor, Goff, when he'd opened the meeting saying he'd been left a mess by the outgoing mayor.
"I want to just take umbrage at that. It's a slight at the governing body of the previous three years."
But even with the occasional pushback and some explicit policy criticisms, the impression over all the hours of debate was that the new mayor had been making an effort to accommodate and act collegially, in contradiction to his 'my way or the highway' campaign image.
Brown is an unusual chair, often quipping about or teasing councillors as he introduces them to speak, showing his impatience with the verbose, praising Sharon Stewart's one-sentence speech and interjecting against others, and commenting on his own state of mind. As the meeting dragged on, he became variously wary and despairing.
"I do hope we live long enough to get to the end of it," he said.
"Thank you. Very entertaining," he concluded one segment. "I think we're heading towards the end of the entertainment."
"Surely we've discussed ourselves to death," he pleaded, calling a vote and getting support. "Bingo."
A late item on the council's submission in response to the Local Government Review panel prompted Brown to recall an uncomfortable meeting he had with the panelists after its draft report.
"My meeting with the review panel didn't go so well for them. Of the 29 recommendations they made, I disagreed with 28 of them."
He then tried to close the meeting, only to be told by an adviser: "You haven't finished yet."
"Oh, bugger," said the mayor, looking down at his notes for the final, seventh-hour straggler item.
"It's just receiving a lot of madness. All those in favour of whatever it is, please say Aye."
Vote done and first budget hurdle passed, Mayor Brown invited councillors back to the mayoral chambers.
"I finally managed to get some beer in the fridge, so you may as well empty it, because it's the end of the year."
He was happy to be on side with and, for now, earning the respect of his new bunch of colleague councillors. But then his mind turned again to the dreaded media and how his beer fridge words might appear. "That will no doubt cause several LGOIMAs [official information requests for the cost]."
