Weekly column by Kāpiti mayor K Gurunathan
Last week, councillors had a pleasant dinner evening at the Surfer's Mistress in Paraparaumu Beach. The lull precedes the kick-off this week to a very demanding five months of work as we go through the process to land our 20-year Long Term Plan by June.
Given the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, we face a tremendous challenge to deliver a plan that is resilient and financially sustainable. In recent months, when the chief executive and I have attended local government meetings, we have repeatedly heard the same concerns from other mayors and chief executives. Concerns around huge, unprecedented workloads, with staff facing burnout and elected members struggling to keep up. The impact of the pandemic has been exacerbated further by a second factor in the form of Government-initiated reforms.
So on December 10, I took the step of communicating my growing concern by writing to the Auditor-General. In particular, given the disruption posed by the pandemic, the Government requirement for councils to provide responses to the three waters reform.
The Government's RFI on this posed some 1300 questions to staff! I told the AG this was not only unfair but also unreasonable.
"I believe that there is a strong and substantial case for a legislative change to the requirement to adopt a new Long Term Plan by 1 July 2021, particularly given the local government sector is likely to produce an amendment to the LTP approximately 18 months after adoption, to reflect sector-wide changes to their three water's assets," noted my letter.