It’s local elections time again, and an opportunity for us all to prove we deserve good government by making informed decisions about our political leadership.
Phil Mackay
While no one is happy about rates rises, I suggest you consider which candidates are offering a long-term, strategic focus, as opposed to short-term promises.
Local government has had a perfect storm of challenges in recent years, with cost inflation, higher interest rates, and lower development contributions all contributing to funding challenges. However, there are also deep systemic issues, some of which could have been resolved earlier with more courageous leadership.
That is not a criticism of current leaders but of the voting public over successive decades. We have consistently voted to have our cake and to eat it – unsustainably low rates increases, without sacrificing on services. In Hamilton City for example, 2014/2015 is the only year in the last two decades where a true operating surplus is clearly identified in the annual report, meaning in other years we borrowed just to pay for day-to-day operations.
The good news is that we now have a highly visible example of (potentially) transformational change, i.e. the water services reform. It’s just unfortunate that it took prompting by central government to get this across the line.
One obvious lesson for local government, is that if you put off making the hard decisions for long enough, they just might be made for you.
The challenges with water services delivery have been known for some time, and there have been previous proposals for joint management organisations or similar. So given the supposed savings and advantages, how much better off might we be if we had gotten our collective act together sooner?
More importantly though, what are the next opportunities for local government? This is a great time to be asking that question of all the wannabe councillors who are putting their hands up.
I don’t generally consider myself an advocate for council amalgamation, especially because I find that word tends to derail productive debate. However, there are certainly opportunities for more collaboration, and for aggregation of services.
Just this month, central government announced that it will allow councils to voluntarily consolidate their Building Consent Authority (BCAs) functions with each other.
Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk said “It is ridiculous builders, designers and homeowners must navigate 67 different interpretations of the Building Code, because of the number of council BCAs across the country.
“Builders can be rejected on paperwork that would be accepted by a neighbouring authority simply because each BCA applies the rules differently.”
Another area where many in the construction sector would welcome more consistency, is in the alignment of planning rules and zones. Surely, we can manage to agree across the region on a single set of rules for what activities are appropriate in a ‘commercial’ zone for example. And a single mapping system to access the whole region’s district plan data in one place would be a real bonus.
Thinking along the lines of the aggregation of water services delivery, it seems logical that there are other aspects of councils’ operations which could be combined in a similar fashion.
For example, I imagine roading is another area where councils are potentially competing with one another for staff, or where smaller councils struggle to justify permanent roles in niche areas of expertise, and are forced instead to rely on consultants. Likewise, aligning the procurement of IT systems, and sharing expertise and talent.
Other suggestions include nursery operations supplying councils’ parks and reserves, recycling operations and/or hubs, procurement systems and personnel, and the list goes on.
The Waikato is ahead of the game in the collaboration space, with Waikato Local Authority Shared Services, a.k.a. Co-Lab, which is jointly owned by 12 councils in the region. The organisation counts among its achievements multi-million dollar savings in the joint procurement of electricity and gas, water treatment chemicals, and insurance brokerage. There are a host of other initiatives that fall under the Co-Lab banner, from regional traffic modelling to energy and carbon management.
It is not the case that local councils are not trying to collaborate. Rather, we need elected representatives who will think strategically, who will work with staff to identify transformational changes, and who will embrace uncomfortable decision-making when it is required.
Demand local change. Photo: Alexas Fotos, pexels.com
