LA ETNOEDUCACIÓN ZENÚ

Time spent in consultation

The legal requirement for the duration of an LTCCP consultation is one calendar month. All councils in the study met the legislative requirements, consulting for the calendar month or just longer. Four councils (Nelson City Council, Tasman District Council, Hawke’s Bay Regional and Horizons) extended consultation time to six weeks. Participants from councils that offered an extended consultation period said this was to give the community, and in particular community organisations, more opportunity to gather feedback for comment. Participants from councils that were active for just the statutory month cited pre-consultation activity by the council (covered in greater detail in Table 14) as the reason for not extending the consultation period.

Consultation resourcing

Consultation resourcing was asked about gauge, in part, the commitment of councils to the consultation and also identify where consultation activity was constrained. The answers showed there was a wide range of approaches to resourcing for the LTCCP consultation. Half the participating councils (Ruapehu, Whakatane, Tasman and Timaru District, and Hutt City) said they had limited resources to dedicate to the consultation effort with resource availability the leading constraint on their consultation activity. Active engagement methods in the community (e.g. meetings and presentation/expo type activity) were identified as time consuming and some councils simply did not have the staffing to commit to these activities.

Three reasons were given by the five councils to explain limits to the volume of resources dedicated to the consultation effort; staff availability, staff levels, and the priority given by the organisation to the consultation. Staff availability was a major constraint, particularly where councils had very few staff in the Planning or the Communications area because of the council size. In one council’s case, recent staff losses had temporarily lowered staffing levels. Also, where the LTCCP proposed a ‘steady as she goes’ approach (in the case of Hutt City and Timaru) it was judged that there were fewer resources needed for the consultation activity.

encouraging participation. Talking about other influences on the nature and amount of community response, she said that “there was not a huge amount of resource was available for the consultation, but we got a generally good response from the community because we use a well-designed survey submission form”.

When asked which staff were used in consultation activity, respondents from four councils reported using only planning staff as internal resources dedicated to the consultation (Hutt City, Ruapehu, Timaru, and Tasman District Councils). The other six had communication and planning staff sharing the responsibility. Asset managers were additionally mentioned by Hauraki District Council as helping with the LTCCP consultation. Indeed, the Hauraki Policy Analyst reported the consultation was a whole of council approach. At the other end of the continuum, in one small council, the consultation was left to one person with the support of outside contractors (graphic designers).

Responding to questions on the limited resources available for consultation, participants from three councils commented that to be more efficient they rolled additional consultations into the LTCCP effort. This was where potential consultations had come up as a matter of business in the six months before the LTCCP and decisions were delayed and the issue subsequently included as part of the LTCCP consultation. This created a bigger resource pool (staff and operational budgets) for use in more time-consuming consultation activity

particularly engagement activities like meetings, forums, stalls and expos. However, the tactic appeared to have its weaknesses with one staff member observing the council had received feedback that the piggybacking approach confused submitters by further complicating the issues under discussion. However, this combination approach did take advantage of the excellent reach of the LTCCP summaries, mailed out to each household. (Further discussion on the distribution of LTCCP summaries is included in the following Section 5.2.3).

Relationships between council and community

The subject of on-going council relationships with the community was discussed in the interviews to investigate this variable as a potential barrier to citizen participation. All participants considered their council’s relationship with the community to be generally

positive. Eight of the ten reported their councils making an active and conscious effort to engage with the community, saying working relationships continued to grow.

When asked why the relationships were positive, participants gave a number of reasons. Four participants felt their council’s on-going strategic efforts towards building the relationships had paid dividends, particularly the time spent actively discussing issues with communities of interest. Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, for example, has a specific strategy to strengthen stakeholder relationships. The Communication Manager there reported that relationships had improved with stakeholders, although in the wider community the relationship remained hampered by low levels of awareness of the regional council roles and responsibilities.

The Hauraki District Policy Analyst mentioned the Mayor’s influence on a positive community relationship, saying his open door policy was well regarded and “interested parties will come to speak directly to the Mayor”. She also attributed the positive relationship to councillors and staff attending many meetings in the community.

Another participant attributed the council’s trusting relationship with the community to the honesty her council demonstrated. Reflecting on the prior performance of the council she explained that “in the past where we have made mistakes, we have openly admitted these and this has had a positive effect”. The Strategic Planning manager from this council felt the honesty also showed transparency, and as a result the council was perceived as “more human and less bureaucratic”.

In a similar vein, another interviewee said his council/community relationship was positive because they had listened to the community in the past and responded by changing proposals as a result of submitter feedback. The participant said this response from the council showed that consultation proposals were open to community influence and submitters have the power to influence in the relationship.

Participants from four councils commented on variable relationships within different parts of their community. The Ruapehu District Council Leader of Strategic Development

out of town saying “the out-of-town citizens are more engaged making submissions, though the locals probably have the ear of the councillors”.

Three other participants reported variations in the relationship according to particular wards and the stance of community boards representing those communities, with one saying relationships were sometimes negatively influenced by community boards. Instead of

representing the council, the boards appeared to assume an advocacy role that was sometimes adversarial. This participant said the wider relationship between council and the smaller communities represented by the boards had suffered as a result. Other participants were more guarded in their responses, one saying the relationship “depended on the community group”, and another reporting relationships were “variable from year to year” and attributing media as a key influence in this variation.

When discussing why the attitudes and relationships varied so much, one participant

commented that the consistency of her council’s relationship was a product of the decisions being made. This participant felt that community interaction tended to be positive until controversial or difficult decisions had to be made, and that difficult decisions had the tendency to polarise the community and public opinion of council.

The Hawke’s Bay Regional communication manager noted that the easy relationship with the community was not necessarily driven by the performance of the council. He believed

relatively low levels of awareness in the community, particularly the general understanding of the council’s role, contributed to low interaction and expectation levels.

The size of the rate increases was mentioned by staff from two councils as having a strong effect on community relationships. The Hutt City Manager of Strategic Planning said “low rate increases were credited as driving positive, or at least less negative, comment in the community”. The Hauraki Policy Analyst illustrated this point when explaining that “we typically have a good relationship with the community, but we didn’t have a big rate increase proposed, and this likely influences our relationship”.