Public can help shape future

Councillor Mark Gould

The Rotorua Lakes Council will ask the public whether they are interested in joining a working party to help decide how the district should be represented.

The council is in the process of going through a statutory representation review which must be carried out every six years.

Councillors decided to form a working party of three councillors and three independent members of the public at a meeting of the council's Strategy, Policy and Finance committee yesterday.

The working party will be tasked with matters including finding if people want to return to the ward system (last used in the 2007 election), the introduction of online voting, how many councillors there should be and the number of community boards in the district.

Councillors voted to elect Merepeka Raukawa-Tait as chairwoman of the working group. She will be joined by councillors Tania Tapsell and Charles Sturt, and three independent members of the Rotorua community to be selected later.

Calls for public expressions of interest will be advertised from February 11 and the council expects to be able to appoint the three independent members of the working party on March 13. The positions will be unpaid.

Council staff pointed out the representation review was a separate process to the council's controversial proposed Te Arawa Board process which could see unelected iwi members sit on council committees and be given voting rights.

Council governance and partnerships manager Oonagh Hopkins said it was an opportunity for the public to take a closer look at how they were represented under a full community-engagement process, and hopefully raise voter turnout in the 2016 elections.

However, the working party concept was not met with universal acceptance. Councillors Peter Bentley, Mike McVicker, Glenys Searancke and Janet Wepa questioned the cost, Mr McVicker saying he felt the decision on how the community should be represented should be made by councillors.

"We are elected to make decisions of this nature ... this seems like a way of stretching out the cost of a simple process," Mr McVicker said.

Councillor Mark Gould said he was concerned about the review's timing and felt the public would confuse it with the Te Arawa Board proposal.

Mrs Raukawa-Tait said it was a great opportunity for the public to get involved in the representation review, especially young people who felt left out of the process.

Councillor Karen Hunt said the question of how many councillors there should be was another important question that hadn't been asked of the public.