Monday, March 5, 2012

District WHAT?

     The possible demise of Regional Councils is OK by me. I’m sure we can find other ways of managing the best aspects of their work and we can do without some of the worst.

     But I think a lot of the arguments used for eliminating them (Listener 25 Feb 2012) should also be directed at the huge District Councils that are to stay in place or even, God forbid, be amalgamated to make bigger ones.
     Paihia’s needs for water, footpaths, libraries and play areas are not essentially different from those of Harihari or Maketu. We don’t need District Councils for needs which are held in common around the country.
     What we do need is a completely new kind of local decision-making body that can relate to the Paihia situation, not 42 disparate communities. This kind of body will not have large infrastructure and a host of salaried officers. It will consist of local people in their local communities operating a mechanism by which they can give advice about what is needed and also develop some special things themselves.
     Some of these groups will be elected formally, some will be kind of ad hoc. All will have a passion to get the best they can out of available national resources, as well as the commonsense to realise that their needs will have to relate to the needs of others. Each will be directly related to just “our community”.
     The Paihia Community Trust is a move in the right direction. Let’s have that instead of the FNDC.


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