They are where the real work happens.
They are always busy producing things, blending useful ingredients to ensure the perfect delivery of a much anticipated meal.
So I find the rhetoric of academics, and armchair critics, who suggest that at a governance level it is bad practice for the elected wing of a public body to spend any time ‘in the kitchen’, quite naive – a view best left to the insulated world of academia.
Furthermore, in a political environment elected members are expected by the ratepayer to have a very good understanding of what is going on in the kitchen, so not spending any time there is challenging and counterproductive.
Councillors like O’Leary, Gallagher, Macpherson and I have advocated from the commencement from the Hardaker regime for a portfolio-type model where each councillor has responsibility for areas of interest, passion and expertise. Wellington does this successfully.
Coming in armed with academic theories (not to mention advice from former Mayor Margaret Evans), Mayor Hardaker has pushed through the implementation of a council structure based only on the corporate model, which they claimed would lead to better control by the elected wing.
Paradoxically, under Hardaker’s brave new world the elected wing has surrendered even more power, removing almost all oversight by elected members of Council operations. All power has been handed over to the “more capable” mayor’s office and recently-arrived management bureaucrats.
A significant and yet un-debated issue is the danger of an elected mayor with no council experience. If you look at the likes of Redman and Hardaker , under their watch we have had the V8’s, Claudelands, a poor exit deal from the V8’s (where we sold assets bought by the ratepayer for $9M for only $1.25M), an attempt to radically shift the rating system to the detriment of residential ratepayers, Floodgate and now Powergate.
