Tauranga City Councillors met on Wednesday to discuss the next steps in sorting out their issues. Photo / File
COMMENT
The Tauranga City Council is on a knife-edge.
Months of reported clashes and toxicity between elected members have decimated public confidence in the council, I believe.
At the centre of the issues has been a rift between a group of six councillors - Steve Morris, Andrew Hollis, John Robson, Kelvin Clout, Bill Grainger and Dawn Kiddie - and the mayor, Tenby Powell, and his former deputy, Larry Baldock.
The six tried to oust Baldock as deputy mayor (he quit and was replaced by Tina Salisbury) and four of them - Morris, Hollis, Kiddie and Robson - backed a call for Powell to resign over his performance, while the mayor accused them of waging a negative campaign against him.
There have been outbursts, a meeting walkout, a secret meeting recording and disparaging texts and emails. At least two members, the mayor and councillor Jako Abrie, considered resigning at one point.
The abandoned $19 million Harington St parking building and $21m Cayman Apartments settlement have not helped either.
The clamouring for a full clean-out of the council is growing every week. The question is: Would the city be better off?
Is it time for 11 politicians to update their resumes and fall on their swords, or should they stay and finish the job the voters hired them to do?
Below is my take on the arguments for and against, and where I've landed.
On Wednesday, two councillors - Morris and Jako Abrie - said at a council meeting that the council should be replaced.
The significance of these viewpoints should not be understated. Two people who are on the team say it's time to call it. Bring in the Crown commissioners or hold a by-election.
Wednesday was also the day the city learned that hiring a review and observer team to monitor the mayor and councillors - the council's chosen method to address their issues - could cost the city's ratepayers up to $350,000 over nine months.
At that point, the in-fighting between people taking public salaries of $100,000 plus a year, in my opinion, stopped being just embarrassing and became outright insulting.
The idea of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on referees for politicians who can't seem to play nicely together would have outraged many residents.
And who could blame them?
Rates and fees are going up for most, some businesses are struggling to survive, and it seems to me the city is constantly scratching around for cash to fund vital infrastructure, and all the while life ebbs out of the CBD.
The Department of Internal Affairs' "please-explain" letter made it clear to me that Tauranga is one of New Zealand's most dysfunctional councils.
Sacking the mayor and councillors and bringing in professionals to perform their governance duties could even prove cheaper for ratepayers, if a prior model is followed.
When the Government took over Environment Canterbury in 2012, it committed that the four commissioners' pay would not exceed the pool of money previously used to pay the elected members.
In the coming months, the Tauranga City Council will make decisions about how to spend billions in ratepayer funds over the next decade.
Good decision-making will guide the city through an economic downturn and set solutions in train for a litany of major issues.
The consequences of bad decision-making don't bear thinking about.
How can this group concentrate on that vital task if they are, as it seems to me, preoccupied with fighting over who is to blame for the mess they are in, slinging mud at each other and stubbornly refusing to change?
Some people believe they can't, and that's why they must go.
The threshold for Government intervention into a statutory body in New Zealand is high, as it should be.
It's the nuclear option.
On only a handful of occasions over the last three decades or so has the Government sent in commissioners - Environment Canterbury in 2012, theHawkes Bay District Health Board in 2008, Rodney District in 2000, the Auckland District Health Board in 1989.
The Kaipara District Council in 2012 was the first time such an intervention had been requested by a council, and that was a council mired in a huge financial scandal involving invalid rates, a revolt against a proposed 31 per cent rates rise and a botched infrastructure project.
Tauranga is not there, yet.
Decisions are still being made. The council put together an operable budget and work plan for the year, and did it fairly collegially (in public, at least).
It's the bare minimum the city can expect of them, but they compromised and got it done.
They also passed changes to a rating policy that arguably made the system fairer.
The council has started preparing its next Long-term Plan, an intensive budgeting process involving hundreds of projects and billions of dollars, that any new team would have to step into without a beat.
That's the other issue with the idea of a full council by-election - it will take months, and could wind up costing the city just as much as the process already in train.
Election manager Warwick Lampp, of electionz.com, gave me a rough estimate for a mid-term election of the whole council: $300,000.
Start that process and there's no early out. There's also no guarantee it will deliver a significantly different or better council. What's to stop the current members standing again?
Every term there are a few councils that show signs of dysfunction.
The Invercargill City Council got a similar DIA letter to Tauranga's recently. Westland had it last year from Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta, and speculation about commissioners swirled in Wellington earlier this year after the capital's council brought in a mediator.
The review and observer process will give Tauranga's council access to independent advice and guidance that might supply some perspective.
Whether members will accept it or change their behaviour is another matter, but all 11 voted to give it a try - even the two who would prefer a full replacement.
Those 11 people were voted in by the residents of this city to serve a three-year term, and they are arguably the best prepared to see it through.
A move by the Government to overstep that as anything but an absolute last resort will undermine our local democracy.
So, others would argue, the council must stay.
I have no trouble seeing why some want to flick this lot off like a bad boyfriend and try their luck with commissioners or a new group of elected members.
On balance, however, I don't think we're at the point where that must happen, and I'm not convinced it would actually help the city overall if it did.
Being too hasty in removing and replacing the whole council could further entrench the divisions in this fast-growing city and plunge it into deeper turmoil and uncertainty at a critical time.
But the current councillors are on notice. Things need to change, and I don't mind if some egos get bruised in the process.
If nothing changes soon, replacing this group with commissioners might be the best option for the city.
Western Bay of Plenty District could have fewer councillors to vote for next election.