Mayors of the small Ruapehu and South Taranaki districts aren’t keen on the idea of council amalgamation, which is one of the recommendations in a final report from the Review into the Future for Local Government.
South Taranaki’s Phil Nixon said he had no real appetite for it.
“It’s athing that rears its head now and again but I think we work together pretty well as councils.
“We already do a lot of shared services. We have also been given the mandate to form our own entity in Three Waters here in Taranaki.
“It should be our choice and I like the fact that they [the review panel] are saying it’s the council’s call. It’s not something anyone should drive, which I totally agree with.”
The report recommends either one council for a region or a combined network model that would retain local councils and mayors but have an additional combined council to carry out “functions that affect the whole region or require specialist capability”.
Nixon’s compatriot in Ruapehu, Weston Kirton, said smaller communities needed to be well represented.
“Any potential merger will have a detrimental effect on that representation,” Kirton said.
“If it was a regional council or a unitary authority, whatever you want to call it, you would have no representation let alone a mayor in your area.”
Weston Kirton says he doesn't think the community has an appetite to contemplate amalgamation.
Kirton, a former Ruapehu representative on the Horizon Regional Council, said the council was already very busy and couldn’t get to all the areas it covered.
Reaching those places was his “day job”.
“We’ve got ten councillors in a small community here. They’re probably doing quite good work for people on an individual, day-to-day basis.
“I’m quite protective of that, and that’s what we would have to forgo if we were getting into amalgamation.
“I don’t think the community has an appetite to even contemplate that. People get annoyed with more reforms and it can polarise the community.”
Nixon said he agreed with the report’s recommendations that GST on rates should return to councils and that central government should pay rates for Crown properties.
“They [central governmen]) are dictating so much to us at the moment around what they want us to do. Our staff are absolutely tapped out and that’s the same for councils and staff around New Zealand. They are spent.”
One comment from the report had resonated with him - “Councils will never be able to give full effect to their purpose if it is subject to regular change”.
“That [change] is what we’ve been subjected to in the last three years,” Nixon said.
