Auckland Council Bill

Submissions on the Auckland Governance Bill have to be in by this Friday, so get your skates on if you haven't already. How to do this is explained here.
The text of the Bill is here, but you can only comment on the sections, not propose any new or radical ideas (such as abolishing property taxes and rates).

My submission is largely the same as the one I made for the Royal Commission last year:

Dear Sir,

Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission as a private citizen.
I have no particular expertise in local government - apart from paying rates - but as a Waiheke Islander, I am concerned that the future governance structure in Auckland will take insufficient stock of the needs and wants of small geographically distinct entities such as Waiheke Island and the other Hauraki Gulf islands.
It's a pity we can't have our County Council back unless we have 10,000 residents (at the last census we barely made it to 8,000) which would be my preference. So for the time being we have to deal with Babylon-Across-The-Sea that is Auckland City.

My submission concerns the future governance structure.

1 Auckland Council

Section 7: The new Auckland Council should become a geographical entity that will be known as Auckland around the world. The current city and district councils should be abolished and their current competences, such as planning, environment, dealing with central Government, transferred upwards to the new Council.
The non-urban areas of Rodney and Franklin should not be included.
The Council should run and own the regional entities responsible for water, sewage, transport, roads, infrastructure, culture and regional well-being.

Section 8: The Auckland Council should have 50 elected members from a proportional region-wide list system (the city as one ward) where your party list gets a seat for every 2% it polls in the election.
The leader of the faction who can form a workable majority on the Council should become leader - in effect a mini version of parliamentary democracy but with stricter proportionality.

Section 9: The leader of the faction who can form a workable majority on the Council should become Mayor - in effect a mini version of parliamentary democracy but with stricter proportionality.
No separate Maori seats are needed under this system as all votes will have equitable weighting under the proportional system.

2 Community Boards

Section 13: All localised issues such as district and local planning should be devolved downwards to the beefed-up community boards who should become responsible for local planning issues and all localised matters (following the subsidiarity principle that policies should be determined and carried out at the lowest possible level) and be properly funded for their allocated tasks.
Community boards should cover natural geographical entities within the region, but do not need to be of the same size or population.
They should be approved by a popular vote after their design.
Their number and boundaries should be determined by local demand.

I do not wish to make my submission in person. Thank you for your attention.

Yours sincerely,