Boundaries change bid raises councillors' hackles

A proposal by the Northland Regional Council for revamped regional representation does not take into account local communities of interest, Whangarei District Council says.

The NRC wants to drop the existing model, based on the three district boundaries and replace it with eight smaller constituencies. The number of regional councillors would also increase by one to nine.

The cost of that extra councillor would be covered within the existing $388,840 salary pool - so nine councillors would share the same money now paid to eight.

Submissions on the NRC proposal close on Monday and the WDC wants to be heard on its submission that the proposal does not best meet the regional representation needs of Northland, and it favours the current representation model.

It suggests that if the NRC considers smaller constituencies necessary, it would be best achieved through keeping existing constituencies based on territorial authority boundaries, but further subdividing those to mirror the ward structure of territorial authorities.

At Wednesday's full WDC meeting, councillor Jeroen Jongejans of the Hikurangi-Coastal ward said the NRC proposal did not represent local communities of interest.

"The problem is, (under the proposal) the northern part of Matapouri belongs to Bay of Islands and the southern part to Bream Bay. It doesn't make a lot of sense to our ratepayers."

Cr Greg Martin, also of Hikurangi-Coastal, agreed. "People in Hikurangi don't have a lot in common with Moerewa and Kawakawa."

Once the submission period ends, there will be public hearings as required, before the the NRC adopts a final proposal.

It will then be sent to the Local Government Commission to be finalised in time for local authority elections in October next year.

Information about the NRC proposal is available at www.nrc.govt.nz/representationreview