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 - musical, 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.  It is vital that you vote for a team that you beleive can work together and bring much greater levels of self determination back to Waiheke.

Top 5 Issues

1. LOCAL DEMOCRACY
   Firstly establishing a strong Board that can return control of the resolution of issues to Waihekians; then we can resolve our issues for ourselves. Failing this we'll end up being told what to do by people who don't live here. Like we are right now. In reality the issues are not the issue. We must work as a team right from day one with strength, resolve and with the able help and assistance of the community, to ensure the greatest benefits. For me, nothing is as important as the need for Waiheke to be in charge of its own future. I came here intending to spend the rest of my life on this island. So have eight thousand or so others. It is time to draw a line in the sand. To say 'This place is our home. We will run it to serve the needs of our community'. Short term gains do not compensate for the terrible long term consequences. We must be able to create bylaws for the sake of advancement of this island's character and protection from inappropriate developments. Waiheke is alive with great ideas and projects, driven by talented and motivated people. Too often in the past we have seen our suggestions sidelined and our local needs ignored when corporate solutions have been imposed which do not fit.
2. EMPOWERMENT
   Secondly, the community must gain confidence in its power to create change. I believe that one of the new Board’s most pressing concerns should be to involve the whole community. We are lucky that already so many islanders have a high level of involvement in this process. The Board must gain Waiheke's confidence that democracy is still alive. As people feel more empowered to contribute to the way our community is run we will all benefit.
3. AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND JOBS
   Thirdly, for this community to function in a healthy way, people from all walks of life must be able to afford to live here. The island must be able to support its citizens with dignity so that they are able to enjoy the outstanding quality of life this island can provide. This will involve low cost housing options, returning government and council contracts back to the island businesses and residents. Producing locally grown food and energy solutions is also part of this picture. Given current world resource shortage issues, as an island we are very vulnerable to import restrictions and higher petrol costs. We need to work to achieve much greater levels of self sufficiency.
   Tourism in the winter would add a great deal to Waiheke's employment possibilities and the Board needs to work with businesses to increase the winter tourist trade.
   Local employment can be increased by returning council contracts to island businesses as a priority and assisting business opportunities particularly where they support self reliance.
4. NO RETICULATION
   We must avoid reticulation of services on the island if we are to retain its character. Reticulation would open up the certainty of large scale developments that would be inappropriate to our infrastructure and natural resources. This does not preclude the use of small scale shared housing units to facilitate low cost housing options.
5. TRANSPORT
   Transport is a vital element in the functioning of any community. The public transport on the island serves the ferries but not the needs of the people to move around the island. There are many options available to make our public transport more user friendly. We spend many millions as individual householders every year on Waiheke alone on our private cars but a very small proportion on public transport.

Personal Profile

A recent Waiheke Gulf News Article provides a good overview of my reasons for standing and qualifications.

"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 [along with being a director of a cleaning buisness in England with 10 employees].  

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"

You may contribute to my campaign fund by paying into    02  0100  0717439.002 

I look to people's strengths and similarities rather than differences.  I know how to work with people to create harmony and overcome these differences to build effective teams.

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 commuinities 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 differences. Someone who can invite interaction and understand possibilities. I have demonstrated these qualities.

From my blog site.  Some ideas about sustainable development -

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.

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.

Dear Andy,

On behalf of the Waiheke Island Riding Club I would like tov wish you farewll  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