Ōpōtiki Mayor David Moore. Photo / Andrew Warner
Ōpōtiki Mayor David Moore does not believe amalgamation with other councils is going to lead to cost savings for ratepayers.
“If you look at one of the best performers as a council in this country, it happens to be the smallest. That’s our little top town in Kawerau. Bigger is not necessarily cheaper,” Moore said.
“Against all odds, Ōpōtiki and Kawerau do have some of the cheaper rates in the country.
“If amalgamation was about bigger is better, you’d find that Auckland had the cheapest rates in the country. I don’t believe that is the case.”
On May 5, RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop, who is also the Infrastructure Minister, and Local Government Minister Simon Watts gave councils three months to put forward proposals on how they would work with other councils.
“Our message to councils is simple: lead your own reform, or we will do it for you. Either way, change is coming,” Bishop said.
The announcement followed a Government proposal in November to simplify local government, which included replacing elected regional councillors with Combined Territories Boards composed of mayors.
Moore said Tuesday was his first opportunity to speak with all the Ōpōtiki District councillors, which was why he had not made any comment in the media earlier.
“I’m not the sort of person who will speak out on behalf of [the] council without consulting with our team,” he said.
“There’s no mistake that this is about amalgamation.
“We desperately want to get information out to the community and bring them into the fold. These aren’t discussions we wanted to have. It’s not something we are choosing to do, but we’re going to have to have them.
“It’s very clear that the status quo is not an option. It will be forced on us and we are working closely with our Eastern Bay colleagues to see if there is a proposal that we can put together, because we want to have some control over the outcome.
”The most likely outcome at this stage would be an Eastern Bay subregion.”
Moore said the timeframe posed a serious challenge to get messages out to the community.
“We really want to have input from our community and our iwi partners, but the timeframe is so tight that, realistically, there’s no way we can possibly do that.”
He said even if the three Eastern Bay councils put a proposal in, it still might not get approval.
“Our first priority is to get out and talk to our own community. But this isn’t three months to do consultation. This is three months to get a plan together.
“I guess there’s mayors brave enough to do this without consultation. I personally think that’s the wrong thing to do.”
Moore urged people wanting to have a say about council amalgamations to contact their local MP.
“By all means, share [your view] with your local councils, but also share it with your MP.
“There will be views either way, but don’t be thinking this will bring cheaper rates. You’re going to lose the voice of small communities.
“There is no cost savings [from amalgamation]. There isn’t the evidence to show that.”
Moore said the three Eastern Bay councils already worked well together on a shared spatial plan, shared services and were looking into a shared water entity.
“We’re doing all these things anyway.”
The mayor said a lack of pushback from other political parties on the announcement was concerning.
“Labour has made no pushback. I would be interested to hear what other political parties thought about it.
“But they have been silent. All of our districts should be asking that question.”
Moore said there were things the Government could have done to make things easier on councils.
“This is another unfunded mandate. We’ve got to do this body of work on top of everything else we do. They’re not giving us permission to pause our long-term or annual plans.
“Some councils are doing representation reviews, which is pretty pointless, considering those councils may no longer exist. It’s interesting times.”
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.