When Nelson Mayor Nick Smith talks about amalgamation, he jokes that his neighbouring mayor, Tim King, has rejected him because he’s ugly.
“He says look, I’m happy to live de facto but I don’t want to get married because you’re a bit of an ugly bugger,” says Smith. “And we have a good chuckle.”
Councils have just six weeks to come up with their own plans to amalgamate into unitary authorities or the Government will step in. But King is not budging.
Smith argues that the communities in the two council areas already work closely together, and the local bodies themselves collaborate on infrastructure such as the airport and the port.
“If we look at our Nelson Tasman communities, it doesn’t matter whether we look at our voluntary organisations like St John and Hospice and Federated Farmers and sports organisations. In almost every sphere, whether it is education, health or environment, our city and region operate as one,” says Smith.
“They’re combined Nelson Tasman organisations, it is the council structure that is out of step with the community and that, in my view, is the compelling reason why we need to align ourselves with the way in which the community is.”
King says his district already voted against amalgamation in 2012. He says amalgamation is not the best solution and he doesn’t think the merger process would be simple.
“Which rating system do you choose? And the implications of changing ratings systems, there are always winners and losers in those conversations,” he says.
People in rural communities stand to lose the most, he says, because their representation is likely to be diluted under an amalgamated model.
King admits there would be some advantages to a merger but says there’s no hurry for Nelson and Tasman because they are already unitary authorities.
“My point is most of those advantages around financ[es], efficiency of service delivery, [and] consistency of rules and regulations can be achieved without political amalgamation.
“My biggest concern is the detrimental impact on representation.”
With the government-imposed August 9 deadline looming, many councils are consulting voters on their preferred amalgamation models.
A supercity is one option being considered for Selwyn, Christchurch and Waimakariri; in Ruapehu there’s talk of a federation where councils would merge their operations for economies of scale but retain existing district boundaries, local elected members, and mayors.
Northlanders are looking at combining four councils under a single unitary governing body.
Nelson’s Nick Smith says he’s also tried to persuade his Tasman counterpart to merge by saying he’d prefer for King to do the job and that he’s told him that he’d be “delighted if he was to step up and take the role of leading that combined council.” But King says he won’t be standing in the next election and it is up to voters to decide.
Auckland-based journalist Simon Wilson lived in the suburb of Mt Albert when it was one of many boroughs in the city.
“They were fiefdoms,” he says.
“It’s very hard to imagine that was efficient at all. The upside of having small-scale local representation is that every citizen is closer to the seat of power.”
Under the supercity model, Auckland Council now oversees an area that stretches from the Brynderwyn Hills in the north to Bombay Hills in the south. It has 20 elected councillors, a mayor, the independent Māori statutory board now called Haukura, and local boards.
Wilson, who writes about Auckland in The Listener and his Substack column Hometown, says amalgamation is not perfect and people shouldn’t expect it to lower their rates.
But it does allow ‘big thinking’ projects like City Rail Link to go ahead and it provides a better funding base for arts and culture.
“Supercity allows the greater good to be pursued in a way that’s very, very hard if you have smaller councils.”
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