The Hastings District Council and the Napier City Council should be congratulated for their shared services project, Omarunui landfill, coming in at almost $1 million over its budgeted surplus.
This is great news. The landfill is run by a joint council committee, with Hastings councillor Wayne Bradshaw as its chairman and Napier councillor Michelle Pyke its deputy chairwoman. Both these councillors were opposed to amalgamation and believed shared services were the way to go. Certainly the success of Omarunui landfill, which produced a surplus of $2,178,547 - in excess of budget by $994,752, supports their argument.
But rather than seeing this as a great victory in the fight against amalgamation (which has already been defeated), these two councillors and others should be looking for more services to share.
This will be more efficient and ensure the survival and prosperity of the smaller councils in our region. A good start was the mayors of Wairoa, Napier, Hastings and Central Hawke's Bay agreeing last week to work on a plan for sharing services.
It makes sense - if there is a way in which we can cut costs and not increase rates - why not exhaust every opportunity to make this work. If every councillor, both for and against amalgamation, put as much effort into finding ways of working together as they did in pushing their position, lots could happen.
