Raglan Community Board chair Ross Wallis says any reorganisation of local government must deliver greater efficiency without weakening the voice of communities such as Whāingaroa.
Ahead of a public meeting in Raglan on Sunday, Ross spoke to Raglan Community Radio about the Government’s local government reform programme and what any new council structure could mean for Whāingaroa.
Across the Waikato, councils are consulting their communities while considering which authorities could work together and what a new structure might look like.
Speaking to Raglan Community Radio, Ross described the Government’s approach as a “shock tactic” designed to force the sector to confront the need for change.
Ross said the speed of the process and lack of detail were legitimate concerns, but he believed some form of change was now likely regardless of which political parties were in government.
“I think everyone’s agreed that some change needs to happen,” he said.
Rather than focusing on the process and its tight timeframe, Ross said communities also needed to consider what kind of regional arrangement they could accept and what protections would be needed to retain local voice.
“We’re not going to stop this,” he said. “We need to probably come together and go, what is something we could live with at a regional level that we could present?”
While much of the public discussion has centred on where new council boundaries could be drawn, Ross said the more important questions were how decisions would be made, how services would be delivered and whether smaller communities would retain a meaningful say.
Benefits and risks of larger councils
Ross said Waikato District Council was already a large and diverse organisation, covering coastal communities, farming districts, established towns and rapidly growing areas near Hamilton and Auckland.
That diversity could make it difficult to establish a single set of priorities, but he acknowledged that scale also brought significant benefits.
“If we were just Raglan County Council still, we wouldn’t have a sewerage upgrade like we did with the millions that they cost,” Ross said.
A larger authority could also combine services currently duplicated across several councils.
Administrative functions such as rates, finance, information systems, procurement and specialist planning could potentially be delivered by one regional team rather than separate teams in every district.
However, Ross said services that benefited from scale needed to be distinguished from decisions that depended on detailed knowledge of individual places.
Any move towards larger councils therefore raised an equally important question.
“How do we keep our voice?” he said.
Under any new model, smaller communities would need protection from being overwhelmed by the priorities of larger population centres.
The risk was not only that Raglan could have fewer elected representatives. Local projects could also become less visible when competing for attention within a much larger work programme.
Efficiency means more than fewer councils
Ross said his two main priorities were improving efficiency and ensuring communities retained a meaningful voice.
He believed there was considerable duplication within the current system, particularly when neighbouring councils operated separate teams carrying out similar functions.
However, he said reform should address more than organisational charts and council boundaries. The way councils reached decisions also needed to improve.
Ross said new proposals could move through repeated rounds of reports, consultation and research without reaching a clear outcome.
“You just need the processes of those decision-making matrixes tightened up so that we can actually get things done,” he said.
Evidence and public input remained important, but Ross believed councils also needed to become more confident about recognising when they had enough information to make a decision.
Without that shift, he said, reorganising councils would not necessarily make local government faster or more effective.
Local knowledge should guide local projects
Ross said any larger authority would still need strong local representation and greater trust in communities to guide decisions about local projects.
Ross pointed to the long-running Greenslade Road playground proposal and discussions about improving low-lying land near the rugby fields.
The playground had been under discussion for years despite being the kind of project that local residents, community representatives and council staff could potentially work through much more quickly together.
Likewise, decisions about whether land near the rugby grounds should be built up to create more usable community space relied heavily on local knowledge of the site and how it was used.
Ross said issues such as these could potentially be resolved within weeks by getting the right local people around a table, rather than waiting through repeated rounds of reporting and consultation.
Under that model, a regional authority could ask the Raglan Community Board what a local project required and give meaningful weight to its advice.
Ross said councillors already looked to Raglan ward councillor Lisa Thomson for local knowledge when Raglan matters came before Waikato District Council.
Council members would ask what was happening on the ground and use that information when reaching a decision.
That principle would become even more important if councils grew larger and elected representatives became responsible for wider areas.
“We’re the experts of our communities, so allow that to shape what you do,” Ross said.
Delegation could balance greater scale
Mayor Aksel Bech has begun delegating more authority to community boards as part of his push to move some decisions closer to local communities
Ross said this kind of delegation could become increasingly important under a larger council structure.
A regional authority could manage major infrastructure, budgets, strategic planning and shared administrative services, while local boards or representatives handled smaller place-based decisions.
That could provide the efficiencies of scale without requiring every playground, footpath or reserve decision to be made by representatives sitting at a distant regional council table.
Ross said there was an unavoidable tension between centralising services to reduce duplication and keeping decisions close to the people affected by them.
One option could be a tiered structure in which a larger council set regional strategy and funding, but trusted local bodies to shape and help deliver community projects.
However, the authority of those local bodies would need to be clearly defined.
Without meaningful delegations, community boards could remain advisory bodies with limited ability to turn local priorities into action.
Whāingaroa must identify what matters most
Ross said the details of any new system had yet to be developed and no single public meeting could resolve questions about boundaries, representation or delegation.
Each council was consulting its community, while mayors and council teams would also need to negotiate with neighbouring authorities that could have very different priorities.
Possible arrangements were therefore likely to keep changing as discussions progressed.
The immediate task for Whāingaroa was to identify what the community wanted protected under any future model and communicate those priorities clearly to Waikato District Council.
Those priorities could include strong local representation, meaningful authority for community boards, access to elected members, protection of local identity and the ability to influence decisions about community facilities and public spaces.
The Raglan Community Board was also holding a workshop to discuss its position and develop a general view on the reforms.
Ross said the final shape of any reorganisation remained uncertain. However, he believed the reform process could provide an opportunity to reduce duplication and improve decision-making, provided efficiency was not achieved at the expense of local influence.
For Whāingaroa, the central question is not only where future council boundaries might be drawn, but whether the people making decisions will continue to listen to those who understand the community.
Public meeting in Raglan
Residents can learn more about the proposed changes and discuss what local representation should look like at the Strengthening Our Voice in Local Government public meeting.
The event will be held from 2pm to 4pm on Sunday, June 28 at Raglan Town Hall.
Guest speakers include former Auckland deputy mayor Penny Hulse, who campaigned to retain community representation during the creation of the Auckland Super City, and Waikato District Mayor Aksel Bech, who is leading the council’s work to develop possible reform options.
The meeting is being hosted by Raglan Naturally Community Trust in partnership with Raglan Community Radio.
It will provide information about the Government’s proposals and give residents an opportunity to help shape the priorities Whāingaroa takes into the reform process. More information is available at the Waikato District Council website.