That process should tell us just how the council is doing, and whether it might do better. The important point there is that any shortcomings are addressed promptly and efficiently.
The council is to be commended for engaging in that process. Exposing oneself to potential public criticism cannot be comfortable, and the fact that the council is doing so suggests that it is serious about ensuring that its performance is all that its elected members and staff, and the people it serves, have every right to expect it to be.
There is a clear perception that the elected members are spending more time putting out fires than they should be. Many of those fires might be small beer, but suggest that this is a council that to some degree at least has lost touch with its community, and is possibly making life harder for itself, and that community, than it needs to be.
That perception might be unwarranted, in which case the Local Government Excellence process should put it to bed. If not it will hopefully lead to the improvements that some at least believe need to be made.
Perhaps this is something of a watershed moment for a council that has never really overcome the ill will generated in some quarters by the process that led to its establishment almost 30 years ago. The heavy-handed approach that saw four counties and two boroughs amalgamated into one district still rankles with some, and not without reason.
The amalgamation process, imposed in the name of efficiency, has arguably never really achieved that, while the damage done to small communities within the district was considerable, and still lingers. Gone are the transparency, democracy and accountability that were once taken for granted.
Too many people see the council as cumbersome, bureaucratic, unresponsive and obstructive, akin to the enemy, difficult if not impossible to engage with in a meaningful way, and failing to grasp the importance of issues that do not have the magnitude to register on a district-wide basis.
A review of procurement processes might not change that, but it should at least offer an assurance that whatever ails the council, if indeed anything does ail it, can and will be fixed. And speed is of the essence.
The job must be done well but it must also be done quickly, if it is not going to be seized upon by the disgruntled element as further evidence that something is badly wrong and the council doesn't have the stomach to remedy it, or even for us to know about it.
And this is a good time to be undertaking such an exercise.
The district has a highly capable, vastly experienced mayor whose commitment to pursuing the district's best interests cannot be questioned, councillors who have the ability to do their job well, and a brand new chief executive who promises a level of leadership that might have been lacking in the past.
To a large degree it's a matter of transparency, which also applies to the council's enthusiasm for talking to Tus-Holdings about the potential for the Chinese university investing $1 billion in this district.
That enthusiasm is understandable, but the community needs to be involved in the discussion, sooner rather than later. Fears are already being expressed about what happens to minnows that swim with sharks, and what the Chinese might want in return for their money, but while it is incumbent upon the council to at least look at what such investment could do for a community that needs it more than most, it must take us into its confidence.
The discussion must include everyone, so there can be no perception whatsoever that the council is making decisions that will potentially have huge ramifications, not all of them positive, on the basis that it knows what is good for us and that it can be trusted to get it right.
Pull the other one
Cabinet ministers come and go but statistics go on forever. And the latest triumphant declaration from Justice Minister Amy Adams continues a shameful tradition of insulting our intelligence.
Last week Ms Adams broke the news that the number of people charged with drink driving offences had almost halved since 2009, evidence of a better level of understanding of the dangers of drink driving. Rubbish.
Statistics should always be taken with a grain of salt, but those emanating from Ministers of Police and Justice are especially unreliable. This latest batch, which Ms Adams says demonstrate the effectiveness of various government initiatives, are particularly implausible.
The much more certain fact is that fewer people are being charged with drink driving than in 2009 because the police are no longer looking for them as actively as they once did. How long has it been since you encountered a checkpoint with a booze bus parked nearby? How long has it been since the police Traffic Alcohol Group made its presence known?
There was a time when TAG visited Kaitaia regularly, and had no difficulty whatsoever in finding drivers who were over the limit. The fact that that no longer happens - for all the writer knows TAG has been disbanded - will have had a much greater impact on charge rates than any dawning realisation that we shouldn't drink and drive.
Certainly the number of drivers charged by police in Kaitaia doesn't seem to be dropping, and we haven't been able to find a local police officer who is prepared to say that it's on the wane.
Using Ms Adams' logic, she could also claim that cannabis use in the Far North has all but disappeared. Years ago the courts were routinely flooded with people charged with possessing the drug, often in tiny amounts. That doesn't happen any more, not because we've stopped using it but because the police have stopped charging. It certainly isn't evidence that the drug has lost its appeal.
Falling court appearances generally can also be attributed to the fact that the police now release many offenders with pre-charge warnings. Individuals who would once have found themselves in court no longer do so, but not because they aren't offending.
If Ms Adams believes what she said, let her reinstate TAG and booze buses (taken off the road when ACC stopped contributing to their cost). Then we will see just how effective her government's policies have or haven't been, without relying on utterly meaningless statistics.
