You can't just leave it to the staff, they were not elected, you were, and as an elected representative with an interest in your community, you take up their cause and make sure it's done.
This is the situation that Whangārei District Council has chosen to abandon in favour of the notion that everyone elected has all of our interests at heart, and we have only two communities of interest- Māori and everyone else.
Whangārei District Council had to have a representation review this year because it chose to introduce Māori wards last year.
Central to the review is identifying communities of interest and deciding how these communities can be effectively and fairly represented.
These have been divided into wards, and the size of the wards determines the number of councillors who will represent them.
The convention is that each councillor must represent, plus or minus 10 per cent, of the average number of electors per councillor.
Councillors are paid from a Remuneration Authority-determined pool, and increasing or decreasing the number of councillors does not affect the size of the pool.
The council has spent months poring over options. Whangārei has two urban wards and four rural/coastal wards with a total of 13 councillors plus the mayor elected at large.
It seems to me this representation has worked well with reasonably identifiable communities of interest, and mostly councillors recognising and representing those needs.
Council voted to introduce a Māori ward so this needed to fit in, and after months of deliberation, went out for submissions with a similar representation proposal as the current one.
This had the two urban wards combined with five councillors instead of seven, the same rural/coastal representation, and two Māori ward councillors.
There were bizarre proposed boundary changes with half of Kamo becoming rural as did all of Maunu. It seemed to me that if you have urban growth the way we have had, then you should be adding another urban councillor rather than reducing, to fix the fair representation issue.
The proposal went to the public who generally agreed with it. However, in an enormous flip-flop and a heavily compromised split decision, councillors decided the public view wasn't good enough and we have the need for only 12 councillors with two communities of interest - Māori and everyone else.
There is nothing wrong with changing your mind if the facts change, but you have to be able to say why you have changed your mind and how the facts changed.
No facts have changed here. This was never an option canvassed or considered, and while the mayor says it is exciting and will bring more diversity to decision-making, the outcome will probably be just the opposite.
This so-called diversity will require candidates to have deep pockets to promote their worthiness to 68,000 electors, instead of tightly boundaried wards.
Mayoral campaigns over the whole district cost in the region of $20,000, just imagine that proliferation of electoral visual pollution.
We, electors, will have a list of at least 30 candidates, probably in alphabetic surname order, for which we select 10.
Fresh new candidates in the second half of the alphabet will have great difficulty with that, as well as having to make their case at various candidate meetings when all have equal speaking time. So much for diversity.
Ultimately, the Local Government Commission will make the final decision and we have until October 11 to object to the council decision.
That is not the ultimate democracy - we would prefer that councillors listened to their people and decided accordingly.
• John Williamson is chairman of Roadsafe Northland and Northland Road Safety Trust, a former national councillor for NZ Automobile Association and former Whangārei District Council member.
