Mayor Revell and local Deputy Mayor Grant ask us in last week’s The Informer (Issue 1212, published June 2, 2026, p15 and p17) to celebrate the recently adopted Community Board Accord.
This is a rebuttal of their flawed reasons for sponsoring and, with Machiavellian brinkmanship and backroom dealings, voting the Accord into effect.
1. To Kill Local Democracy:
Analogous to “To Kill a Mockingbird”, a novel about innocence confronted by prejudice. Through Scout Finch’s childhood eyes, it shows how racism, fear, class judgment, and mob thinking corrupt a community’s sense of justice, while Atticus Finch’s defense of Tom Robinson models moral courage, fairness, and the duty to do what is right even when defeat is likely.
Its central lesson is that society often destroys the vulnerable and harmless – the “mockingbirds” –unless people are willing to stand against cruelty and injustice.
Metaphorically, the Accord is destroying local democracy. The Accord, presented by the Mayor and Deputy Mayor as a historic breakthrough, is, we are told, the first document to set out mutual obligations between the Council and its five Community Boards. Sounds impressive until one remembers the existing TCDC Community Board Terms of Reference (ToR), giving local boards much wider and far-reaching empowerment and influence to make local decisions. The fact it, for some convenient reason(s), was never implemented in the 2022/25 term, during which both the Mayor and Deputy Mayor served as councilors, speaks volumes!
2. Local Decisions: For Locals: By Locals
The ToR, whatever its imperfections, recognised a simple democratic proposition: district and core functions sit with the district; genuinely local matters should be shaped locally. The Accord reverses that spirit. It speaks the language of partnership while leaving the real levers elsewhere. It is the council’s version of Atticus Finch being told that Tom Robinson will receive a fair hearing, provided the jury has already been instructed on the verdict to reach.
The claim the Accord gives Boards a real pathway when things are not working deserves closer examination. A pathway to what? Escalation, discussion, reporting back, alignment, relationship-building and further process are the answers.
That is not a pathway to local empowerment and influence. It is a corridor lined with committee language. If a Community Board cannot make meaningful decisions, set meaningful local priorities, and hold staff accountable for local matters, then why have local Community Boards?
3. A BIG Backwards Step
It is not persuasive to say the Accord supports Board members in navigating a system that was not set up to support them. That admission should be the starting gun for reform. Not the closing speech for surrender!
The Mayor, together with several of us, campaigned on local empowerment. If the system was not built to support local representation, the answer is to rebuild the system. It is not to issue a guidebook explaining how elected community representatives may better endure their own marginalisation.
4. Factually Wrong
Most troubling is the suggestion that all four Mercury Bay elected representatives supported the Accord. That is factually wrong. Chair Richard Shelford-Woodcock, currently on health leave, did not support the Accord. Accuracy matters, especially when public confidence is already thin. Local democracy is not strengthened by tidying dissent out of the story!
Further, two out of three Mercury Bay elected Councillors voted against the Accord – only Deputy Mayor Grant supported it.
5. Conclusion
To Kill a Mockingbird endures because it shows how respectable institutions can produce unjust outcomes while speaking in the language of order, procedure and civic virtue. The mockingbird is harmless; it sings, it contributes, and it asks for little. Community Boards are much the same. They are closest to the streets, halls, reserves, boat ramps, libraries, local events, small frustrations and practical needs of our communities.
To strip them of real influence, then praise them as valued voices, is to admire the song while removing the branch.
We do not need letterboxes, liaison panels, ceremonial consultation, or elected couriers delivering local disappointment to district headquarters. We need members who understand community empowerment is not a slogan. It is delegated authority, budget influence, local priority-setting, transparent accountability, and the courage to say no to district convenience dressed up as collaboration.
What do you think?
This Opinion Piece is my private opinion. It is NOT written in my capacity as an elected Mercury Bay Ward District Councilor. I do NOT speak on behalf of Council. I write in my capacity as a resident of Kuaotunu, a lawyer and businessman.
