The weather was kind for a few hours today and I joined two council staff members on a trip to the Turitea Reserve. All councillors have been given several opportunities to go up to the reserve by 4-wheel-drive to familiarise ourselves properly with the “lay of the land” prior to our workshops and later decision-making over the proposed change in status of the Turitea Reserve. Until my trip today, nobody had taken up the road-trip offers; however, several of us have been trying for weeks now to get an aerial view (the only way the entirety of the reserve can be seen) and, with luck, the weather will be kind enough to let us take off tomorrow.

Last week I was asked why I had not written anything about the proposed change of purpose of the Turitea Reserve and proposed amendments to the Turitea Reserve Management Plan. Well, I wrote about the submissions and hearings in my post of 15th September. I can update you now on things that are a matter of public record, but that is all I am able to do.

Palmerston North City Council issued this press release:

The Local Government Commission will decide on the sort of representation Palmerston North will have at next year’s local authority elections when it holds a one day hearing in the city next week. The commission will hear submissions, appeals and objections to the decision the City Council made earlier this year when it supported city wide voting, a community ward for Ashhurst but decided to retain the number of Councillors at 15.

In all 30 people have lodged objections to the Council’s decision and these will be heard at the Seminar Room, Te Manawa from 10-4.30pm on Thursday, September 28.

Some readers have asked if I would do a weekly round-up of my council activities. I will certainly try to do this for you (and hopefully busy weeks won’t result in me forgetting).

This week was a busy week with council. On Monday and Wednesday evenings, I attended the first two of the three days of hearings on the proposed change of purpose of the Turitea Reserve and proposed amendments to the Turitea Reserve Management Plan. Council received 530 submissions to these changes. These were distributed to councillors in three packages. I followed my usual routine of reading all submissions as they come in to me, then re-reading the lot the day before the hearings. The hearings are set in three sessions on each of the three days - starting 5pm, 7.30pm and 9pm. The final day of hearings is on Wednesday, 27th September.

This, from a council press release. I suspect the Standard will not publish this (I can’t recall any instance of them ever publishing a correction).

The City Council has never questioned the decision by Horizons to allow Fonterra effluent to be discharged into the Manawatu River or taken a position over it.

Water and Waste Services Manager, Chris Pepper, is concerned at a Manawatu Standard report that suggests the Council has taken a stance over Horizon’s decision to grant a resource consent to Fonterra.

The City Council has estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 ratepayers could qualify for some remission of rates and, so far, just over 1,100 applications have been processed with the majority of ratepayers receiving the maximum rebate of $500.

Following the government announcement that, from July 1, 2006, it was raising the thresholds to allow more people to qualify, the Council established a dedicated team to handle inquiries. For the last month the team has been meeting ratepayers and processing applications and is encouraging ratepayers to take advantage of the service as quickly as they can.

Local Government New Zealand to work with the Government on the independent rates inquiry

Local Government New Zealand’s President Basil Morrison has welcomed the Government’s intention to conduct a principled and comprehensive inquiry into rates.

"I am reassured by the independent nature of the proposed inquiry, free from some of the more extreme solutions expressed recently, such as rate-capping", he says.

"An independent inquiry provides an opportunity to fully investigate the funding issues affecting local government and it allows us to represent the views of our member councils. The issues surrounding rates and various rating systems are complex and require a comprehensive evaluation free of political influence."

There is the old saying that a week can be a long time in politics. The events of this week in our National Government certainly seem to add truth to that saying. First, we had Rodney Hide, the leader of the ACT party, promoting his Local Government (Rating Cap) Amendment Bill, which would have put a cap on rates increases. Along with this, we had the Greens and the National Party calling for a select committee inquiry into rates. They had met to discuss a draft Terms of Reference for this parliamentary enquiry, which was due to be before Parliament tomorrow. Rodney Hide’s Bill was defeated on its first reading and the Government moved quickly to announce an independent (ie. not Select Committee) inquiry before National and the Greens could do anything.

Since my inauguration in 2003, I have been asked by many people, “What is it like, being a councillor?” Recently, a couple of people have e-mailed me, asking me to sum up what exactly a councillor does. These are really two different questions but as so many people have asked them in the same conversation, I will endeavour to answer both here.

Our form of government is representative democracy. We elect people to represent us in both Parliament and the council chamber, as well as on a number of other local governance bodies such as district health boards and scholl boards of trustees.

There are many opportunities for us to express our opinions about the activities of those who make decisions on our behalf - but to take advantage of those opportunities we need to understand how government works at both levels: Parliament and the council chamber.