By Ray Chung, Wellington councillor running for mayor,

Some people think I’ve spoken to every Wellington resident since being elected to council in 2022.

It’s hyperbole, but attending as many residents’ association meetings and cultural events as possible has allowed me to benefit from a deeper understanding of the communities and cultural groups that make Wellington a wonderful city in which to live.

Often, I’m the only city councillor to make an appearance.

I speak to hundreds of residents each week. They tell me their struggles under the weight of a city council that has no respect for them and treats them like a never-ending ATM. The two political parties that use local government as a training ground for their loyal apparatchiks have imposed a financial burden on the city over many years that is biting ratepayers very hard.

Compared to Auckland residents who own similarly-priced properties, Wellingtonians are paying double the amount in council rates demands. A $2 million property in Khandallah is being billed around $12,000 per year from council. For people who are on fixed incomes, like pensioners, they are extremely concerned. It is often the elderly who have worked hard, paid their taxes and rates and are the ones who may no longer be able to afford to live in their family home.

Wellington has a declining population, crumbling infrastructure, a depressed housing market and a crashing business sector. And yet this isn’t acknowledged by a council bureaucracy that steam-rolls ahead with projects costing hundreds of millions of dollars and which the city can ill afford. Council deficits threaten to blow the lending “debt ceiling” and the only way through it is by raising that limit. The Standard & Poor’s rating agency has already downgraded the council’s credit rating, evidence perhaps that the rating base is deserting the capital city. People are abandoning the city.

For far too long, party politics have ruled over Wellington city and ratepayers have borne the fiscal brunt. The current city council is majority ruled by the Green Party and Labour Party. They have unleashed their ideology on the city and brought Wellington to its financial knees.

In times of hardship, strong people emerge as leaders. Last week, the strongest team in 20 years to contest the city council elections was launched – the team is called “Independent Together” or “it” with the tagline “vote for it”, reinforcing the policy that party politics doesn’t belong around the council table. Each team member is running as an independent candidate in their own right, and all support a set of policy pillars that, when implemented, will allow Wellington ratepayers to keep more of their money in their pockets.

Bureaucracies succumb to mission creep. They have a tendency to perpetuate their own existence and expand unreasonably in the absence of strong governance and oversight to keep them under control. We will look at services the council provides and hold them to the principle of value for money. Services that are core business and provide value to the ratepayer will remain.

Our policy of Zero Rates Increases has been met with the usual scoffs from Labour and Greens supporters. “It can’t be done,” they cry. If elected representatives go into council with the belief that zero rates increases cannot be achieved, then that will always be the result.

Delivering value will restore public confidence in the council. It’s going to take a special team of elected representatives strong enough to fix council spending. That is the target we are working towards. Ratepayers deserve nothing less. We are soon to embark on city-wide events to take our policies to the people, and the voters will decide.

My two biggest competitors supposedly are the former Labour Party leader, Andrew Little, and Green Party member and incumbent mayor, Tory Whanau. Both candidates are talking up more tax and more spend. I haven’t heard anything that says ratepayers will save money.

Wellington voters have a clear choice about who is going to actually save them money and who will be more tax and spend. Andrew Little is tax and spend. Tory Whanau is tax and spend. Ray Chung is zero rates increases. The Independent Together team is zero rates increases.