Councils must review how to improve the dialogue with their communities to strengthen local democracy.
One way is to work much more closely with our locally elected community boards and committees. Another is to consider how we might establish special forums for different interest groups to recognise and support what our community holds important.
Crystal Beavis
Council planning, budgeting and rate-setting processes are not always well understood in the community, and so the importance of bringing community committees into the process can’t be overstated.
Waikato District Council has taken a step down this path by inviting representatives of community boards and committees to attend workshops to help set the goals and ‘community outcomes’ that will shape the next Long Term Plan 2024-34.
Working together we’ve drafted four community outcome statements that speak to the council’s vision for the district, ‘liveable, thriving and connected communities.’ The statements are designed to focus the council’s decision-making on community wellbeing in four areas – social, cultural, economic, and environmental. They will be finalised following public consultation.
This collaboration is designed to provide the community with more understanding and input from the very beginning of the planning process rather than just following a tick-box exercise at the end.
The next step is to refresh our local area “blueprints” that were first established five years ago to capture local aspirations for township development, and to prioritise key initiatives. Community boards and committees are now being asked to review their ‘blueprints’ and provide feedback by the end of June.
This feedback will be used by council to help make decisions in the second half of this year about future work programmes and the budgets on which your future rates will be based.
The final step in the process is to bring a proposed Long Term Plan 2024-34 back to the community for consultation early next year before it is finalised for adoption by the end of June 2024.
To support these initiatives the council has also invited elected community board and committee members to the first of a series of general ‘catch-up’ sessions with council to build an understanding of how we might work better together to deliver what the community wants.
The council is also examining how it might develop other consultative groups to enable us to better understand and focus on the needs of iwi, rural interests, and our many smaller communities across the district.
The Tamahere-Woodlands Heritage Committee is one such group which, with council support, is spearheading a project to install heritage signs in our many small villages, including Matangi, Newstead, Tamahere and Tauwhare, and has started building a website to collate historical information.
Recognition of community values starts at the top. For the first time two monarchs’ portraits command space in our council chambers. In a ceremony shared with Kīngitanga representatives and iwi last week, Waikato District Council unveiled portraits of the Māori King, Kīngi Tūheitia Potatau Te Wherowhero VII, as well as of our newly crowned constitutional monarch King Charles III.
