After years of hearings and thousands of submissions, the Auckland Unitary Plan recommendations are finally about to be made public.
It's expected the independent panel's proposed changes, which will give a better idea of the future the city faces, will be released shortly after lunch.
The expert panel spent nearly two years figuring out what changes needed to be made Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan (PAUP), before it becomes law.
Around 13,500 submissions were made to the panel, which was appointed by the Government.
Until now, the panel's recommendations have been kept under wraps. After lunch both the public and the Government will find out what the report contains at the same time.
Penny Pirrit, council director of regulatory services, said it's the end of a long process.
"There is no further opportunity for submitters to put forward whether they like the panel's recommendations or not. It's basically now decision time - it's been almost five years... the council needs to make a decision."
It culminated in a 1000-page document which was handed off to the councillors last Friday.
Youth lobby group Generation Zero is hoping the PAUP will recommend the city build up, and not out.
Auckland director Leroy Beckett says the city can't keep sprawling.
"We can't be building hundreds of thousands of houses hours away from where people already want to live. It will just cause more commuters, people driving into the city, which causes more congestion, more carbon emissions - none of that's good."
Mr Beckett says it's important any political grandstanding is put aside during the debate.
"We just really need to get on and pass this plan," he says.
Auckland Council will have until August 19 to consider the proposals, unless it gets an extension of up to 20 days from the Minister for the Environment.
Between August 10 and August 18, councillors will decide which recommendations to accept and which, if any, to reject. The council says the meetings will be "fully transparent", open to the public and available to watch online.
It has to notify the public of its decisions by August 19, unless the Minister for the Environment gives them an extension of up to 20 days. Either way, Auckland should have a plan in place before the local body elections in October.
Councillors aren't able to reconsider anything in the plan which wasn't looked at by the expert panel.
If councillors want to reject a recommendation from the panel, they have to provide an "alternative solution that is within the scope of submissions". That is, someone had to suggest the council's preferred alternative during the submission process. This however means anyone who made a submission on that particular topic can make an appeal to the Environment Court.
"If we don't accept the provisions that the panel are recommending, we would have to put forward alternative provisions, and also provide a cost-benefit analysis of those alternative provisions, then there would be an appeal period," says Ms Pirrit.
The panel may make recommendations that didn't come from the public. If the council accepts any of these, anyone can make an appeal to the Environment Court, whether they originally made a submission or not - as long as that person "is, was or will be unduly prejudiced by the decision".
The council cannot reject a recommendation and substitute it with something wholly new - it has to be either from the panel, or from a public submission.
There will be a public inquiry line for anyone with questions on the recommendations from Wednesday. The council also hopes the panel will provide a new, complete text of the Auckland Unitary Plan including its recommendations, as well as updated maps showing changes to zones.
"People will be able to go in and look up their property on the map and see if their zoning has been changed, go to the residential provisions and see if the panel is recommending any amendments," says Ms Pirrit.
"But we do need to be clear that it's all recommendations - no decisions have been made. I wouldn't be recommending to anybody that they make decisions based on what they see on Wednesday, because that's just a recommended version of the plan, not the decision version of the plan, which won't happen until August 19."
The council will make an effort to let locals know what the plan means for them after it's agreed on, not before, to avoid giving the impression there will be more consultation with the public on its contents.
"That would just lead to confusion amongst the community," says Ms Pirrit.
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