There are 67 councils across New Zealand. Is that too many? Should we get rid of some by amalgamation?
Councils began with amalgamation around 150 years ago. District Water and Road Boards were joined because the same people were doing the same administration. It made sense to reduce bureaucracy.
Andrew Bydder
Since then, many more roles have been added to councils. Some of these functions make sense, such as rubbish and sports fields, which are best managed locally. Others made sense when they started, such as libraries and building consents.
Now that these can be managed nationally, it is inefficient to have 67 councils across New Zealand each running their own systems. Still more have never really made sense. Zoos and theatres have great community value, but councils don’t bring any management skills to the board room table for highly specialised services.
Hamilton City Council has 28 different business units. The smaller councils in the region have similar responsibilities, but fewer staff to deal with them. This implies amalgamation is essential because it is very hard for the smaller councils to cope. But the real problem is that councillors and senior managers simply don’t have the expertise in all those areas to be effective, or even useful, regardless of the size of the council. This why Auckland amalgamation has resulted in more bureaucracy, not less.
The solution is to amalgamate certain functions, either regionally or nationally, and give them autonomy. For example, a national building consent service can be run by building experts funded by consent fees; libraries (which already have a national association and inter-regional loan system) can be managed centrally and funded by taxes rather than rates, while zoos could be run by independent trusts with a combination of admission charges and subsidies. Kaitaia library has more in common with Bluff library than either has with their local council sewer system.
The advantage to councils of removing some functions is to simplify their management systems for their retained services. Currently, the health and safety manager has to deal with librarians at risk of a paper cut, right through to zookeepers at risk of being killed by a tiger (which happened in Hamilton). Any one system that tries to deal with this range ends up being complicated for every user. It is to nobody’s benefit. An autonomous national library can have a system tailored to their needs that is very different to one used by zoos.
Where services, such as water, wastewater, and stormwater, benefit from local knowledge and management, local councils can be retained for local representation. There are no economies of scale to be gained by merging management of Te Kuiti’s sewer system with Tauranga Council when the pipes are separated by 140km and a mountain range.
The outcome of amalgamation by function will allow councils to change focus from mere administration back to good management, with less bureaucracy and therefore lower rates.
