Weekly column by Kāpiti mayor K Gurunathan.
This week's Kapiti News edition carries a third piece by KCDC chief executive, Wayne Maxwell, continuing to provide a good dissection of the government's 3 Waters Reform. There's a critical reason for the series. It starts the serious engagement with our communities and elected members to identify the key elements and complexity of the proposed reform. Staff needed time to firstly understand the challenges and then get elected members up to speed. This also required contracting specialist consultants, Castalia. I had another reason to support the CEO's articles. With local elections coming up next year there is the potential for elected members to start grandstanding on issues for name branding and political mileage. Simplistic political positions are not the answer to the complexity of the reform proposals we face. We have seen a bit of this already in our social media and nationally.
It's useful to quote Minister of Local Government, Nanaia Mahuta, in her response to Waimakariri mayor, Dan Gordon. "What we are seeking from local authorities prior to the end of September is not a decision on whether you wish to opt-out of the reform process, but feedback on the set of reform proposals released, the impacts these might have on local communities and how these can be improved," she said. Her 17th August letter said councils concerned about having to cross subsidise other poor performing councils should instead look at the reform analysis providing opportunities "for all to access lower-cost structures." I hasten to add these very claims and the underpinning assumptions are what's making things complex for councils to respond. Case in point, Whangarei District Council, one of the first to declare their intention to opt out, contracted global consultants Castalia to test the government's proposal. Their report raised serious concerns about the assumptions and the modelling of the government's consultant Water Industry Commission of Scotland (WICS) as it applied to the New Zealand situation. The Department of International Affairs together with the Central & Local Government Three Waters Steering Committee responded to the Castalia report stating that the WICS proposal had been independently peer reviewed by two other consultants, Farrierswier and Becca NZ. Both supported the WICS findings. They also claimed Castalia's report for Whangarei contradicted some of its own findings in an earlier report commissioned by LGNZ itself. Given this bun fight in this consultants banquet one can see the complexity triggered by the reform proposals.
This week, the mayors and chief executives of the 22 councils that make up Entity C (one of the 4 proposed aggregated organisations), including Kapiti, have written a strong letter to the minister seeking a genuine role for councils to engage in the process noting that each council has its own submission to make about its unique circumstances and impacts of its communities but there was also some collective areas of concern to be resolved. This is because the range of reactions to the proposed reform stretches from complete support by some councils to complete opposition.
Around the country there are about 12 councils who are keen to retain their 3 Waters infrastructure because it's connected to road planning, district planning and economic development planning. Like Kāpiti, they have invested in infrastructure and don't wish ratepayers, who are paying high rates, to have to subsidise other councils with lower rates and requiring significant investment in 3 Waters infrastructure. As mayor Helen Worboys of Manawatu put it, their infrastructure is not broken and don't need fixing and they were confident of providing 3 Waters services at similar costs to that of the new entity. These councils are open to alternative solutions to problems in other parts of the sector, she added.
The government also needs to show how the key issues raised by the 22 councils around the collective concerns will be resolved. I want to mention one particular area of concern. The need for the government to provide effective leadership and a collaborative culture in working with the local government sector. Critical because the 3 Waters reform will reshape the local government sector which must be co-ordinated to avoid significant disruption and cost to communities. This should include financial support to enable this transition. The lessons learnt from this reform proposal should be applied to the areas of other reforms like the RMA and Future of Local Government reform. To avoid the potential of cumulative negative effects these reforms must be carefully aligned through a holistic collaborative approach.