From the Mayor

For this month, The Star have asked for an overview of ‘what the hell they all do in there’  – a good question if you don’t occasionally pop into our meetings.

Your Council is a governance overview of what the South Wairarapa District Council is doing – assessing progress, giving direction to Council officers, and making decisions on projects, funding and revenue.

It’s important to note we are not able nor allowed to be involved in day-to-day decisions on potholes, consents, trees, etc; however, in a small Council like ours, we tend to be more involved than a larger Council may be.

Council has three major committees (Assets & Services; Finance, Audit & Risk; Planning & Regulatory) that receive reports and recommend decisions to be ratified at a Council meeting, to ensure a full council meeting doesn’t get bogged down with days of reviewing information. A big frustration for all Councillors is when someone doesn’t read these reports, and ends up questioning information already supplied.

When I became Mayor, I removed about seven committees, and condensed most of the business into the three committees above – partially because we are a small Council with less business than, say, Wellington, but also to allow interested parties to attend a minimum of separate meetings to see all business being discussed. 

This transparency initiative, along with recording and live streaming meetings and other initiatives, makes us one of the most transparent Councils in New Zealand, despite what the ill-informed may claim.

Business is split into two areas, South Wairarapa district-specific, and regional/national responsibilities. It is surprising how many committees and meetings outside the district are involved in local government.

Current external committees of import are Wellington Regional Leadership, which discusses growth issues with Ministers for the Wellington region, Wairarapa Committee with GWRC, Local Government NZ meetings on the overall approach of the local sector, Wellington Water committee meetings, Regional Transport Committee, and Combined Wairarapa council meetings. All of these need knowledge and skill to represent our District in lobbying and deciding on actions which affect our area.

Locally, the range of business we consider is incredible in its scope, and we rely on Officers’ reports to outline options, affects and cost. Over the past two years Councillors have worked with the CEO to increase the quality and detail of information in these reports, and if you compare them to old reports, they are far superior now. We may not like the information, but at least we know the reality.

Major issues we are involved in at the moment are:

• 3 Waters – its impact and a practical approach to this bulldozed legislation
• Featherston wastewater plant – its consenting, cost to replace and what standards need to be reached in a fluctuating government environment
• Water infrastructure replacement in all towns – trying to do 20 years’ work in 4-5 years, and the cost to do this
• Roading maintenance in an environment of shrinking Govt contributions and double-digit inflation in roading costs
• Housing – what happens to pensioner flats, and how we grow towns without destroying their character
• Economic development, and how we focus on initiatives that give the biggest bang for our buck
• Governance review, and how we incorporate Māori wards into our structure, and how many elected officials is the correct number (currently it is 10 Council and 12 Community Board elected members) 
• Rates – how they are set, and whether the distribution of rates for rural versus urban is fair and equitable
• Climate Change – how we adjust our operations to be carbon neutral,  and allow for climatic changes and disasters in our budgets.

All of these things, and many more, are constantly being checked and allowed for in our plans for the future. And I don’t envy the Council staff having to research and recommend actions on every possibility the district can face over the next 20 years plus.

And I would finish with a reality check – this Council does not run a cash surplus, and Audit NZ checks this all the time. We can only receive money from ratepayers for areas we intend to spend money on, and have told them will be done. 

All rates collected are for necessary activities, and there are no ‘nice to have’ vanity projects in what 

we are doing. 

Currently I am very happy with our financial situation, the progress made in fronting up to neglected infrastructure replacement, and the robust discussion when making decisions for the future. You have a very good Council, and should be pleased with what has been achieved this triennium.

No decision of Council will be agreed with by all. 

However, you should be careful of the minority who state their opinions as fact and repeat unsubstantiated information that damage local government to no purpose other than their own. There is plenty of information in the public domain. I would suggest they make the time to attend a few Council meetings or at least fully read the reports submitted.

Mayor Alex