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- By Aksel Bech, Waikato District Mayor
During the government’s permitted three-month window, we held targeted consultation and received nearly 13,500 community interactions over five weeks. This included social media, web feedback, and 36 in-person events across the district.
A big thank you to everyone who had their say!
We also spoke with iwi, regional council, Federated Farmers, catchment and other key stakeholder groups to better understand the regional functions that would need to transfer along with existing Treaty settlements already in place.
From this work a preferred five-council, all-of-river model, has emerged stretching from the Waikato River headwaters at Taupo through South Waikato, Waipa and Hamilton City to Port Waikato in our district. It covers the river’s full journey from lake to ocean so is catchment based as the river must be managed as one and as such is also known as the Waikato Western Catchment model.
The community’s top priorities were protecting local voice and decision-making and ring-fencing the legacy debt of councils joining together.
Much work remains on the governance structure to achieve that, but feedback was clear: smaller communities must retain a strong voice in any larger structure so as to learn from the Auckland super-city local board model where not enough funding and decision making is delegated to the local community itself.
Taupo is not Tuakau, and Pirongia is not Pokeno so community boards and committees, with stronger delegation and budgets, will be crucial.
The governance model must protect local representation, decision-making and funding – not leave communities relying on decisions from a distant, large unitary council.
We believe the Lake to Ocean, or Roto ki te Moana, model will benefit our communities now and for generations, so it is our preferred model and is formally put for adoption at our next council meeting.
However, the other councils also need to support it. Waipa and South Waikato have already backed the model; Taupo has not yet chosen any model, and Hamilton City is still deciding. Support from the initial three councils is enough for a viable Head Start proposal under government criteria so we are confident of submitting an eligible proposal by the August 9 deadline.
UPDATE: the deadline has now expired since we ran the above in our last paper. See our next issue, out from 20.08 for more – Ed
