The co-designing communities approach excited a large number of Raglanders at a seminar held on Thursday 28th August. About 45 locals attended the session presented by David Hammond, an expert in this local government approach which allows local people to make decisions about local issues and services. The multi-media seminar was held at the Old School Arts Centre.
David said it was time for councils to stop using the ‘one-size’ fits all approach used by centralised district councils. With the new approach overall costs go down with centralised policy planning being minimised and local support offices taking their place.
Mr Hammond covered examples from his time as CEO of the Thames-Coromandel District Council. A new Mayor had been elected to do away with the old centralised approach to council governance and management. In the new local approach, community boards were taken up into the governing body. Accountability for fourteen services was given to the community boards. These services included libraries, parks and airfields. Boards were given the authority to buy and sell properties.
The result was lower costs, higher council staff satisfaction and increased ratepayer satisfaction.
Bob MacLeod said that the Raglan Residents & Ratepayers Association has organised the seminar to raise awareness of the need for Raglanders to stand in this year’s local government election. Mayoral candidates Wally Hayes and Brian Cathro were along to learn more about the approach. Absent for the seminar was the current Mayor, Allan Sanson, a known advocate of reducing the powers of community boards. Raglan councillor Clint Baddeley was at the session along with some community board members.
After the seminar, Raglanite John Lawson said, “It would be good to know we’ve got 6 people being nominated for the Board and as many as possible for councillor jobs to support the ideas talked about this morning. Who is standing?” Bob MacLeod said he has lodged his nomination papers.
Others at the seminar thought that a follow-up meeting would be useful to plan how best to support candidates known to support a decentralised approach to running the district council. John Lawson has set up a web page to pick a date for this meeting: There’s a Doodle poll at http://doodle.com/poll/pp6qpdd4h7xi5d4n to decide a date.
When several of us put this idea to council in 2015 they said, “Council reviewed the delegations to its community boards in 2013 and does not propose to review them at this time.” So it’s going to need several new councillors and a new mayor to get any change.
I agree.
In the Candidate booklet 2016 Each Community Board is separate from the Council, but can only operate in terms of the delegations granted to it by Council. So why cant we operate our local services? It then goes on to say “WDC has granted a number of significant delegations to Community Boards, including the allocation of a small local improvement budget, and discretionary funding for community grants,” I would question the word “significant delegations”
Only a new mayor and several new councillors will change the way council wastes money and delivers poor services because it’s too centralised. In their terms the delegations are significant. We need candidates willing to listen to local views to get the rates savings and better services which councils like Tasman and Thames-Coromandel are already enjoying.