Local Focus: Tauranga's representation review – what's changed and why

Tauranga City Council is reviewing how many seats will be contested in next year's local body election.

Under the current system, there are 10 councillors plus a mayor.

Four of the 10 councillors are elected at large - elected by people city-wide - and six are elected by people living in three geographic wards, with two representatives for each ward.

The mayoral position is elected at-large.

"The new system that's being proposed is for us to have nine councillors plus a mayor," Coral Hair, manager of democracy services for Tauranga City Council, said.

"For the nine councillors, eight are selected from general wards.

"So one councillor in each of those general wards and one Māori councillor."

The Māori councillor is elected by people on the Māori electoral roll across the city.

"That's a reduction of one councillor and a different way of electing the councillors than previously."

Council Commission chairwoman Anne Tolley said she hoped the changes would help avoid a repeat of what happened with the last council.

"Let's face it, Tauranga's in a crisis of its democratic processes at the moment," Tolley said.

"That's why we've got commissioners in here.

"We've done that quite deliberately to try and avoid some of the disturbance we had in council last time.

"The Review and Observation Team said they felt that mixture of some at-large who also ran for mayor meant that the mayor didn't have a clear mandate and that some of those were continuing on with their mayoral campaigns.

"So we've gone away from that quite deliberately.

"Whether this is the process or model for many years to come - we're not promising that.

"But we're saying at this point in time we think it's really important that there's strong leadership, that the mayor has a very clear mandate and that no one part of town has a majority of the council, if you like."

The proposed representation model attracted 139 public submissions. Of these, 71 (51 per cent) agreed with the proposal, and 76 (48 per cent) disagreed.

Tolley said the community response to a request for feedback was disappointing and the "vast majority" of submitters were aged more than 50.

"They're good voters, they already take part in the democratic system.

"What we really wanted was young people, younger family people and particularly people voting for the first time. It would have been nice to get more from them.

"You've got to balance that. It's not a numbers game you can't just reply on submissions.

"As a politician, you'd got to be out talking to people all the time and take notice of a wide variety of views."

Hair said there was an appeals and objections process, which closes on December 13, before the new representative arrangement was set in place.

"After that, those appeals and objections get heard by the Local Government Commission and they make the final determination, after they've considered those appeals and objections."

Residents should know what the new representation arrangements will look like by mid-April.

Saturday, October 8 has been set as election day and candidate nominations close mid-July.

"The results are usually five or six days after the elections," said Hair.