A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
Councillors have decided to resolve the dilemma of the two East Coast wards falling below population requirements by tweaking rural ward boundaries and proposing another city ward councillor be added, from next year’s local body election.
Changes to ward boundaries weren’t discussed at yesterday’s meeting, where only Pat Seymour spokebriefly to oppose the amalgamation of four rural wards into one — which involved two of the three options before them. But merely adding an extra city councillor would have still left Matakaoa-Waiapu (2940) with 15.1 percent less than the now average 3464 population per councillor, and Tawhiti-Uawa (2870) 17.2 percent under; both well below the +/-10 percent deviation allowed by the Local Government Commission.
According to different figures used by the council, wards under the 14-councillor scenario will need between 3117 and 3120 people to be compliant. (Figures are based on the 2013 Census.)
Yet the proposed rural wards map received by councillors yesterday has 3060 in Matakaoa-Waiapu, 3108 in Tawhiti-Uawa, 3081 in Waipaoa and 3090 in Taruheru-Patutahi. For an unexplained reason they use a total rural population of 12,339 rather than the 13,240 attributed to the four rural wards elsewhere from Census data.
Tables indicating that the rural wards are compliant after adding a new city councillor seem to rely on average populations across the rural wards only, not surprisingly delivering “compliance” — -4.4 percent (not +4.4 percent as in the table) of the average based on 13,240 total rural population; and variations of 1 percent or less after boundary modifications and using the 12,339 rural population figure.
But the idea of this exercice is relativity across the whole district. A problem with over-representation for residents in shrinking rural wards can’t be resolved by leaving the urban population out of the equation . . . even after funnelling them an extra councillor.
Having not been privy to the councillor workshopping or bureaucratic machinations involved, your editor is left confused. It will be interesting to see what explanation there might be for what seems to be a glaring error.
Footnote: A council officer has advised that councillors knew numbers were still being "tweaked around the periphery" when they voted for this option - which was one they had introduced, and not one of the seven options council staff had originally recommended. Numbers (all of them compliant) were finalised this afternoon, and a map was supplied to The Herald with rural ward numbers (based on the 2013 Census total rural population of 13,240) as follows: Matakaoa-Waiapu 3360; Tawhiti-Uawa 3300; Waipaoa 3400; Taruheru-Patutahi 3180.
