Whanganui district councillor David Bennett encourages people to stand for council.
Whanganui district councillor David Bennett encourages people to stand for council.
Steven Baron was absent from the Tuesday District Council meeting.
He is such a regular attendee, that I almost offered an apology for him.
He will be disappointed to learn it was the second shortest council meeting chaired by our mayor and we were all away by 5pm.
Steve has been banging on about various councillors' attendances (mine in particular), but I suspect that Steve, perhaps like others, may no real idea of the workload.
I remember nearly six years ago, when I asked councillor Helen Craig how she was finding her first year on the council, I marvelled at her reply that she was spending nearly 30 hours a week on council business.
We see our roles as district councillors as strictly governance. We are not there as de-facto management.
We are there on a part-time basis to set policy, debate and make decisions that provide guidance to management and oversee the chief executive whose responsibility it is to "run" the council business day by day.
Councillors, especially, are to be the conduits of community concerns to management and daily operations.
Apart from the approximately six-weekly full meetings, the council has set up three specific sub-committees that focus on the various core operations – Infrastructure, Strategy and Finance and Property and Community.
Obviously each of these committees deals with a wide range of issues but generally their discussions and debates are somewhat more relaxed and have an agenda that can be more wide-ranging than formal council meetings.
Apart from confidential sections, the public can attend most of these meetings but only the council meetings are broadcast.
Meetings are just one part of being a district councillor.
In addition, there is an elected Rural Community Board, a Youth Committee, a Waste Minimisation Working group and several others.
All councillors are able to attend these sub-committees but I have always considered that these committees allow individual councillors to attend basically depending on the actual agenda, their experience, skills and interests.
And at times they may or may not attend. I make a point of attending the Finance and most of the Infrastructure, but, if I am busy or out of town, I may miss an occasional committee meeting.
But in addition, most councillors have other official meetings they are appointed to and these are mostly not publically reported.
These sub-committees have responsibility for such things as audits, tender approvals, Iwi relationships, council trading businesses and numerous other matters as they arise.
What takes even more time is possibly more important. I have dealt with planning and building consent issues where business owners and ratepayers don't seem to be getting action on their problems from the council management.
There was stormwater drain in Grey St last year that was allowing water to flood into a neighbour's property that was not getting action.
It took a visit by councillor Young and I followed by some fairly terse suggestions to senior management before the drain was fixed within a couple of weeks.
These sorts of issues and conversations are almost a weekly issue for me.
I am also pressing NZ Transport Agency to do something about the "forgotten highway", SH 4, from just north of Whanganui East to Raetihi.
It's a disgrace that storm damage from June 2015 is still not fixed.
There are now three sets of traffic lights between here and Raetihi, plus numerous drop-outs, subsidence, temporary barriers and a general lack of maintenance and upgrades.
I think this is one crusade that I can especially push as a district councillor and a regular road user.
But there is also a visionary requirement.
When we, the so-called "four horsemen of the apocalypse", were campaigning for election in 2016, our theme message was "grow Whanganui".
We set an arbitrary target of a population of 60,000 by 2030 and ratepayers supported us and we as a city are on the way.
There is a very significant need for district councillors to be thinkers.
Without growth, we as a city and region will go backwards, and a significant amount of my time is spent encouraging planners, engineers and business owners to think about how we can grow the city in every respect.
The next triennial elections are not far away and potential candidates should be thinking about standing.
I am not sure if I will stand again but I have spoken to a few individuals who I think should be preparing themselves.
In 2016 there were several female Iwi-supported candidates who spoke well and I thought would be great contributors to the council.
But it seemed they lacked the support of family and friends and funds to campaign successfully - but they should get ready to try again.
I hope this explains where I stand. I have a very busy life and responsibilities as an owner and CEO of a growing international company.
But felt it important that before I became too old, that I made a stand to be on the council.
After 29 years as headmaster of what is now the Wanganui Intermediate school 100 years ago, my grandfather served a term on this council.
By then he had the time. This is the real problem, unless we as individuals can actually make time, the role of being a district councillor is time consuming and not that well paid for those without other income.
Mayor Hamish has been fortunate in that he has had a group of very talented people who have got on pretty well with each other.
Previous mayors have not been as fortunate and ratepayers will soon have the opportunity to give Hamish another group of individuals who bring their talents, hopes, visions to the table.
It can be a very rewarding opportunity and privilege to serve but ratepayers must choose carefully between candidates to select those who really have the skills to be a councillor.
Continual griping about the public meetings that district councillors do or do not attend does not seem to be a reason sufficient for being voted in.
I want to hear from Steve Baron what he actually stands for, not what he is against.
