Future of Tauranga City governance to be decided in council meeting Monday

How people are elected to Tauranga City Council in the future is to be decided on. Photo / NZME

The future of how Tauranga city will be run is expected to be determined today, and people have wasted no time to suggest what they want to see.

Tauranga City Council commissioners will discuss and make a decision on a representation review in a meeting.

The review sets out the structure of the democratic arm of the council, which is traditionally made up of a mayor and councillors elected by the community to their respective roles.

Last year, Tauranga's councillors were discharged from their duties and commissioners were brought in following a tumultuous series of events that prompted Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta to intervene.

Those commissioners - chairwoman Anne Tolley, Stephen Selwood, Shadrach Rolleston and Bill Wasley - will now determine just how many councillors the city needs in the future and who within the community they represent via specific wards or whether at large.

Representation models proposed were: 10 councillors through a mixed model of wards and at large candidates; 10 councillors from just two wards (general and Maori); 12 councillors from seven wards; and 12 councillors with single-member wards.

These options were put to the community for feedback, resulting in 825 responses. The two wards model with 10 councillors received the most support with 274 votes. The potential of establishing community boards also received feedback, with 374 respondents voting against the idea compared to 312 for and 130 unsure.

In a report to be presented to commissioners on Monday, democracy services manager Coral Hair referred to the findings of a Review and Observer Team which monitored the elected members for several weeks last year.

" ... they considered some of the issues and behaviours that the council was dealing with at that time had their genesis in the representation arrangements that the city had," Hair said.

"The team developed a strong impression that the contest for the mayoralty did not end with the election and questioned if the mix of at-large and by-ward election of councillors was a contributing factor to the current situation. The team also questioned whether communities of interest were coherently represented."

The report stated Peter Winder, chairman of the observer team, suggested at the time that the council should consider redesigning representation arrangements where all councillors, except the Māori ward councillor, are elected from a larger number of smaller wards with boundaries. This would create "a clear and certain mandate from the public and provide a better than even chance of delivering a functional council than the one the team observed".

In New Zealand, each council was expected to carry out a representation review at least every six years under the Local Electoral Act 2001. Tauranga's would be the first to include a Māori ward since legislation that enabled a public petition to veto a council's decision on Māori wards was amended earlier this year.

Last year the council voted to adopt a Māori ward, a seat on the council for a person representing 15,300 local residents on the Māori electoral roll.

A representation review addresses:

• The total number of councillors appropriate for the city;
• Whether councillors are elected from wards or by a mix of both wards and "at large" (across the city);
• The boundaries of wards and their names;
• Whether there should be community boards and, if so, the number of boards; their names and boundaries; the number of members for each board including any appointed members; and whether the board area should be subdivided for electoral purposes.