There is little to no evidence of either of these things.
The government requires councils to produce Long-Term Plans. These are required to set performance measures taking into account what is most important to the community.
They must be relevant, understandable and verifiable, and capture such dimensions as quantity, responsiveness, reliability, quality and timeliness. They need to go along with budgets.
These requirements are not unreasonable.
They are based on the hardly novel idea that the role of local government is to spend our money wisely and be accountable.
Instead of following these rules, councils often bombard us and their councillors with huge amounts of information, much of it irrelevant to the decisions being made.
This allows councillors to pretend that we want the ever-increasingly expensive results of their decisions. It allows staff to present proposals as safety issues when they are really cycleways, or necessary replacement of underground pipes when much of the cost is streetscape, making motorists drive in circles.
Councillors then spend hours engaging in processes which seem designed to confuse, obfuscate and cover up the real choices being made.
The decisions forthcoming are based on who knows what. All we can be sure of is that the cost will be far greater than originally agreed to.
Often residents cannot give useful feedback, since the information is insufficient while being confusingly complex.
Residents’ opinion surveys in Dunedin say we want more parking, but councillors spend a lot of our money on making it hard to get around and park in the CBD. There is no engagement in council meetings about why, despite clear indications that people want something and councillors are voting to do the opposite.
Rather than blaming government for unsustainable rate increases, it would be more useful if councils actually concentrated on the provision of services as wanted by well-informed residents.
Very little time is spent in giving councillors the information government requires, despite virtual wheelbarrows of information available for meetings. The Dunedin City Council had around 400 pages for its last council meeting agenda before Christmas.
The provision of relevant information to us would allow councillors to actually receive useful feedback. Having meetings with a focus on making decisions in line with the wishes of residents and carrying them out would give some chance that at least our rates would go to what we want.
Staff could report on how they are doing against the plans relating to their area of the work programme. Not achieving the work agreed to or going over budget should be taken seriously.
At the end of each three-year term of council, the people could judge whether they are pleased with what the council decided would be the services to be provided, and whether they had overseen a council which had carried out these services for the budget agreed.
Currently, councillors hide behind blaming government and circumstances beyond their control. We have no way of knowing whether these excuses are reasonable.
Some services are required by government. These should be clear on the face of the plans, as would the estimated costs.
Residents should be able to comment on both, whether they were actually required by the government and/or whether they should cost what is estimated.
We could close down entirely any part of councils which are doing anything that has not been consulted on, and anyone, either staff or councillor, who considers their role to be chastising government.
For example, we all would like a hospital with up-to-date facilities. But how does that translate to spending over $350,000 of ratepayers’ money to tell the government what to do?
It is unlikely that most ratepayers think haranguing someone is the best way of encouraging them to do something for us.
If we have the proper information required by government, and councils stuck to genuine consultation followed by a focus on doing what they agreed to do, rates would be cheaper and more responsive to the wishes of the people.
This column is shorter. So would council meetings be.
• Hilary Calvert is a former Otago regional councillor, MP and Dunedin city councillor.
