In the Informer of 1st September Fleming Rasmussen wrote an article, in a personal capacity, explaining the various problems with the Local Body Amalgamation and at the end of his article asked, “What do you think?”. Well, such a question deserves a reply.
Before replying to Mr Rasmussen, I must point out that Hamilton City only spent $29 thousand on consultants for the amalgamation exercise yet the much smaller TCDC spent over $181 thousand on consultants for the same work. Councils such as Matamata-Piako restricted such expenditure to $25 thousand yet Mr Rasmussen seems to indicate they received better value than TCDC from the amalgamation process. Says something about the efficiency of our council organisation doesn’t it.
Mr Rasmussen’s lengthy article (I think solicitors must charge by the word) is summarised by his statement that the Council “chose a process that settles direction now and substance later”. He further stated that he felt “that is not commercial courage; it is option value destruction”. I couldn’t agree more, but the arguments presented were mainly about assets and the value of the amalgamation and I question whether that is the full story.
The consistent problem with the gradual consolidation of local authorities is that larger and larger head office bureaucracies are built while community decision making is lessened and lessened. Prior to 1975 the Coromandel Peninsula consisted of three local bodies, Coromandel County, Thames County and Thames Borough. Mercury Bay formed a significant part of the Coromandel County, was close to the “seat of power” and the entire County was of the same type, being coastal rural. With the amalgamation the seat of power moved further away from the community and a different community type was introduced with Thames being more aligned with the plains of the Thames Valley than the rugged coastlines of the rest of the peninsula. Community decision making has been reduced, virtually eliminated this year with a majority of the individual Councillors ignoring their election promises to empower communities, instead deciding to take a castration knife to them by introducing their Community Board Accord in May 2026.
With the Amalgamation the trend looks to continue. No financial benefit is planned for rate payers and, as stated by Mr Rasmussen, financial benefit to the merged Councils is many years away, if ever. Most of us will have passed on by then. The bureaucracy will no doubt grow and community power further diminish, as this is what history tells us. It is what can be done about this that is the important part of this amalgamation. Mr Rasmussen states that “No further commitment should occur…” until various things take place. He is quite correct to state this and we can but hope that the rest of the Council can see sense on this occasion. But he is also incomplete in that he does not seem to understand that we must agree on the style of the new Council before signing off on it.
An old adage states “that if you keep practicing a process that has always failed, you will fail again”. This adage applies to the amalgamation situation whereby the style of the amalgamation is to build up a larger central bureaucracy while diminishing community decision making capability. This style should be reversed so that we have empowered communities with significant budgets. The communities in effect use the central Council as a sub-contractor to provide specific services, primarily of a regional or administrative nature. The Community Boards must become the decision-making body.
This style of structure would enable communities to largely control their own destiny. For example, rates could be split into regional charges and community investments with any community being able to democratically determine the quantum of their rates to go on community investments. For example, my recent rate bill is $1,400 more than the Hauraki average rate bill, due partially to the curse of the TCDC rating change which gave me a 13% increase. If we are to pay so much extra in Mercury Bay, then we should logically have more funds in our “community investments” budget. If not, then my rates ethically should be lowered.
A community centric style would also enable assets and liabilities to be apportioned fairly to the various communities. Mercury Bay would for example retain decision making control over spare lands such as the empty section next to the council building which our community may decide to sell so as to use the funds for another community project. Conversely there may be a special community charge on the Hauraki Community to pay for their debts which are significantly more than ours.
The point is that a community centric style allows rate payers to make decisions for their communities. It also reduces the demands for the bureaucratic burdens that we currently experience. So, while I basically agreed with your article Mr Rasmussen, I think you need to add “Agreement on a Community Centric Model” to your list of requirements before any further commitment is made.
