Agendas for the year’s first Central Otago District Council community board meetings being held today for both Vincent and Cromwell Community Boards contain a report from council chief executive Peter Kelly proposing dramatic reductions in the boards’ delegated authority.
Mr Kelly’s report says the region’s community boards had exercised delegations over and above community boards’ key roles as identified in legislation.
In particular, they had an implied control over assets in their wards, including land and revenue.
That relied on a two-step process of gaining community board approval before ratification by the council, the report says.
The proposal was that ‘‘much of the delegated authority given to community boards be returned to council’’ and community boards would advocate and gather feedback from ‘‘a grassroots level within their wards in accordance with provisions in the Local Government Act 2002’’ and feed that back to the council.
These changes acknowledged the ongoing importance of the community boards in being a strong voice for their community, while ensuring a whole-district view was taken in critical decisions currently facing the community, the reports said.
‘‘Recently, the long-term planning process and the challenging operating environment going forward has prompted council to reconsider the continued appropriateness of these delegations and implied powers of the community boards, with a view to amending them to better align with the legislation.’’
In the council’s register of delegations - adopted in October last year - community boards had delegated authority to spend money without council oversight in areas such as maintaining and upgrading community centres, public halls and museums as well as parks and cemeteries.
The boards could decide on roading work, as long as they could fund it, and could make grants and donations.
In other areas - such as bridges and roading needing extra funding - the boards could make recommendations to the council.
However, a community board’s power was limited to matters solely related to its ward and it had to act in line with the council’s overall policies and plans.
Mr Kelly’s report said the community boards could make written submissions on the proposed changes and those would be presented at next month’s council meeting.
The Vincent Community Board meets this morning in Alexandra and the Cromwell Community Board meets at Cromwell in the afternoon.
