South Wairarapa District Council is excited to have engaged with an invited representative group from the community in an open and frank conversation at a half day workshop with a focus on increased pressures of affordability for both residents and the council.

The event was held on Wednesday 4 December and CEO Janice Smith describes it as a game changer for the council.

“It was a fantastic opportunity to listen, reflect and do some myth busting of misinformation that often surrounds rates and council spending. We want to champion a different type of engagement with residents, offering an untainted view about the challenges they and we face. This is our first step in taking our community on that journey.”

One of those who attended was Featherston resident and Featherston Booktown Karukatea Festival Chair, Peter Biggs, who says he deeply appreciated the council proactively reaching out to South Wairarapa residents to give them context around the issues and challenges the council faces.

“I also deeply appreciated the council staff and councillors being prepared to listen as well as to share the thinking behind decisions they make. It was an illuminating insight into what we as a community need to work through together with the council over the years ahead in order to flourish and thrive,” says Biggs.

The session focussed strongly on the council’s attempts to build financial sustainability, the costs of delivering core services and achieving more while using fewer resources to do so. It builds on a year’s worth of work by elected members and council officers who have undertaken several significant and deep reviews of organisational budgets, looking at how they can best balance those challenges with increased resourcing pressures from central Government and growing financial stress to the community.

The workshop was facilitated by the Chief Executive Officer and supported by senior council officers and elected members. It was an honest dialogue with mutual respect strongly evident between the council and the community, which included local business owners.

“This was an honest and frank conversation that allowed us to speak openly about the relatively small size and resources of our provincial council and the fact that we are legally obliged to provide some legislative core services. They are the same as for a metropolitan council, only with a small fraction of the resources. This isn’t always clear for the community and we want to work with residents to increase our efficiency, demonstrate the value we bring and fund through a fair and equitable rating mechanism,” says Paul Gardner, Group Manager, Corporate Services.

The catalyst for the open workshop style discussion was a community petition which was presented to the council on Wednesday 20 November by Principal Petitioner Leah Hawkins. The petition garnered over 1,000 signatures, reflecting widespread support for it.

While acknowledging the strength of feeling in the community, it was also an opportunity to reinforce the many months of detailed and challenging work already invested into addressing the challenging environment, underinvestment in core infrastructure and social impact issues that the council and community face.

With this in mind, the Deputy Mayor Melissa Sadler-Futter took the opportunity of the open discussion to highlight the need to the petitioners to work alongside council to send a strong message to central Government. This message is to address the transfer costs of unfunded mandates, costs associated with legislative changes and champion the concept of devolved funding by the transfer of a portion of GST back to councils.

“We hear the deep concerns in the community about the historic rate increases and financial pressure borne by local households and businesses,” said Deputy Mayor Sadler-Futter.

Chief Executive Officer, Janice Smith, noted that it was a pleasure to speak with the community in a small group format where meaningful discussions could take place.

“It was a great pleasure to speak with those who attended. The majority of our staff are also ratepayers, including myself. We are not distanced from the realities that our amazing community faces. We will continue to think outside the box and not sit on our hands hoping that central government will somehow come to the rescue.”

The open style of discussion at this workshop led to a rigorous and enthusiastic debate with the community, which the council hopes to build on, says Paul Gardner.

“It was another opportunity for us to take residents on a journey and show them that we recognise the ongoing concern about the increased costs as we move towards consultation on our 2025-34 Long-Term Plan early next year,” he says.

“We have been advocating for many years to central government to say we need help. In the meantime, we are seeking new funding streams and have entered into new cost saving agreements with neighbouring councils to maximise efficiencies for everyone in the community, working smarter with the resources we have.”