Many people do not recognise just how big the city council actually is, or how much it impacts on our lives. Palmerston North City Council owns, on your behalf, assets valued at over $1 BILLION. We often see in the newspaper the debates over issues like the Senior Citizens Club carparking, with figures of less than $20,000, so it is easy to think of council as dealing with small sums of money. The $5,000 here, or $100,000 there, which are regularly discussed in the paper tend to make us forget that when Councillors are preparing the budgets we are dealing with tens of millions of dollars of your money.
This is big business and a huge responsibility.
As a Council, we work within a legislative framework set out by central government and as elected members we are also governed by laws and regulations and must know these laws well.
Council also provides services through collaboration with other agencies and by funding or contracting community organisations. Councillors interact regularly with these organisations and attend meetings, presentations etc. for a large number of external agencies.
One thing I have really come to appreciate since my election is that the skills we need our Councillors to have are perhaps not given sufficient weight when we come to voting. The person with a lot of community involvement, or the one with the best personality, may not be the person you want dealing with budgets and finances, or deciding on strategic direction for the next ten years. As central government has pushed local government into more of a corporate model the expertise of Councillors has come under the spotlight. Starting later this year, formal tertiary training for Councillors will be undertaken through Local Government NZ. Councillors involved in the Resource Management processes are likely to have to undergo training and accreditation.
But, that study and training is coming. What else does a Councillor do now?
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