Whakaaro: Feeling the draft
“Meaningful delegations to Tasman District Community Boards” have been an ongoing issue since at least 1999. Delegations to boards have been resisted by the council corporation.
This is quite inconsistent because council staff have their own “Delegations Register” and have no problem delegating various roles between staff members. Granting decision-making delegations to community boards is about sharing some “power and control”.
In my opinion, the corporation is not afraid of the inability of community board members to do the job. They are afraid of their ability. Most community board members come to office having served in other governance roles, such as on school boards of trustees, boards of directors and the like.
In 2006, TDC decided to “fix” the community boards by abolishing them. The Local Government Commission (LGC) reinstated the boards in 2007 and recommended they be granted delegations. TDC continued to resist granting delegations.
In 2007, the Golden Bay Community Board accessed a delegations model used by Waimakiriri District Council for the Kaiapoi Community Board. It modified this as a template to suit local purposes and submitted it to TDC as a draft in late 2007.
There were two meetings in Motueka in early 2008. No decision-making delegations were offered.
The Mayor and present CEO toured Southland and Stewart Island between 8 and 15 July 2009 looking at community boards there. This eventually resulted in a long-awaited report from the CEO, which was not presented to council until 2 September 2010. This discredited report failed to meet any of the guideline criteria for the quality of advice to council as listed in the TDC Code of Conduct at the time.
When the Local Government Commission recently released its Draft Reorganisation Proposal, which increases the number of elected representatives for rural areas and grants delegations to community boards, TDC was stung into action. It has tried to turn the game by cynically offering delegations now.
There is one big difference between the LGC and TDC proposals. The LGC proposal is guaranteed for six years. The TDC one isn’t guaranteed for six months. Given the history, in my opinion we would be quite foolish to trust TDC on this. As of today, there are still no decision-making delegations for Tasman community boards. TDC is reportedly considering the matter again on 11 August.
In response to a question about delegations during the Motueka reorganisation meeting held on 1 August, the Mayor reportedly said that “TDC wants to run a six-month trial on this and then decided what form of delegations may be effective in future”. Sadly our mayor and many of our elected councillors appear to have become salespeople for the council corporation instead of fulfilling their paid role of representing the people.
In my opinion, Yes Minister is thriving at TDC.
Joe Bell
