Opinion: Community boards under the microscope

Kāpiti mayor K Gurunathan. Photo / Jack Penman

Weekly column by Kāpiti mayor K Gurunathan.

Central government has traditionally treated councils as a second-class governance sector lurking in the public shadows. Until, of course, when the first wave of Covid-19 hit our shores.

That's when central government and its agencies realised that, when it came to the crunch, it's councils that had the local grassroots network to provide the support that communities needed.

Government ministers are on record expressing their appreciation of the local reach of councils across the country. It highlighted the ideology of localism promoted in recent years by Local Government NZ, the body that represents councils.

The current Government is rolling out a series of reforms that's centralising decision-making and management. These include polytechnics, the public health system, the RMA, and the Three Waters Reform. The last two triggering the exploration of reforming the whole local government sector.

Although it's not part of the Government's reform programme, we are now going through another item to the season of change.

The mandatory six-year representation review. This is where councils are required to review the number of wards, its boundaries, the number of councillors and community boards. In the case of Kāpiti, our councillors are further divided equally into district-wide and ward councillors.

For months, the council used independent consultants to research public views which included a sample of public engagement. Over a number of briefings, councillors workshopped at least five different options. It was a complicated process as the public engagement reflected communities with a range of views.

One conclusion from the research was that there was confusion from multiple levels of representation making it onerous to access decision-makers.

A significant conclusion was that the research suggested that the current approach to community boards "was not adding to effective and efficient representation of communities of interest". The preferred proposal by a majority of councillors is for a reduction from the current four wards to three and the removal of all four community boards.

Predictably, and understandably, community board members are agitated by this. It's important to understand that councillors have not made a decision. It's a proposal. It's a proposal that will have to go through a public consultation process. This will open it to be tested by the public and especially by the boards themselves. I'm looking forward to some good persuasive submissions.

Councillors who are required to have an open mind are bound to value this input. The research did identify that a minority believed that a diverse range of community voices "could be achieved by strengthening the role of community boards".

In February 2020, I presented all the boards and their ward councillors a set of five ideas on empowering their existing roles identified under s53 of the Local Government Act. Adding that it will be good to hear back from their own discussions of these five ideas. I believe the impact of the first wave of Covid may have contributed to reducing the urgency of such deliberations.

The current lockdown should not compromise the need to have a robust consultation process. An appeal has been made to the relevant government agencies to allow councils to reschedule the consultation period.

In this political season of centralisation localism needs to be given a chance and boards be given have a fair opportunity to argue this principle.