This week, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon launched into local government leaders, telling the sector to get back to basics and forget about the "nice-to-haves".
There was a collective groan from the assembled Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) conference in Wellington on Wednesday.
Mr Kircher said he agreed with the PM’s call to focus on core infrastructure to an extent,
but it needed to be consistent with what central government continued to require of local government.
"I think it’s a very narrow message when councils are delivering 30 to 40 functions," Mr Kircher said from the conference.
"Successive governments come in. The four wellbeings are in there then they get taken out.
"This switching all the time is not helpful and it’s understanding what does that actually mean, and what do they consider is core infrastructure, and what are they going to pick up if councils aren’t doing them."
Mr Kircher said many councils did "the infrastructure well".
But it was also within the local government ambit to make their communities "better places to be" and the government needed to "step up" and do its bit to reduce the cost pressures of its policies, which fell to ratepayers.
This included the regulatory and financial settings that impacted their ability to do the basics, Mr Kircher said.
Yesterday the government announced more details of a Regional Deals framework to address infrastructure shortages.
Minister of Local Government Simeon Brown said that would help drive economic growth and deliver a fix for "an infrastructure deficit".
It would mean "long-term collaboration" between central and local government by jointly delivering "a long-term vision" for regions by co-ordinating capital investment, he said.
However, Mr Kircher said the problem remained of a pendulum shift every election cycle.
That impact on local government was not being acknowledged and, critically, those shifts "created significant costs to councils and local communities".
He wanted to see new policies undergoing compulsory Treasury analysis on the rates impact, Mr Kircher said.
The government has announced it is looking into capping rates to inflation and requiring greater accountability.
Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clarke said he supported that concept but core cost issues remained, giving water infrastructure as an example.
"All governments enact requirements on to local councils ... they then expect ratepayers to pay for those new service requirements."
Meanwhile, the government had rejected the idea it pay rates on Crown land — a key recommendation of the Future for Local Government Review of June 2023.
"Why do government departments, who reside in Invercargill, not pay rates like other businesses, yet still reap the benefits of our council-provided services?" Mr Clarke said.
A move to hold local government to "performance measures" omitted the mandate of local ratepayers — who funded the services, Mr Clarke said.
"How would it be if councils held central government to performance standards, on behalf of our ratepayers [taxpayers]?”
Mr Kircher said the key message this week reinforced a "lack of recognition" by central government of its impact in telling councils to do less.
This had come to the fore in an LGNZ workshop yesterday with Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey, at a time when suicide had been painfully exposed in Waitaki in the past four weeks.
Having had six tragedies in recent weeks, it was incumbent on his council to show leadership in supporting community initiatives, Mr Kircher said.
"There’s massive gaps in the government system around mental health.
"The events of the last three to four weeks really show we’ve got to have some input at a local level.
"It is something council is involved in — it’s not infrastructure; it’s people’s lives.
"For the government to say you’re not doing that, well, they’re not doing it."
A "good sewage system" was not necessarily why people chose a place to live, Mr Kircher said.
It was the wider amenity and socio-economic values, yet these were now being described as "nice to have".
