Straight from city council with councillor Steve Morris

This Monday Greg Brownless was sworn in as Tauranga's 29th Mayor since 1882 and my fellow councillors and I formally took office at the same time. It is both a humbling and serious responsibility to be empowered to make decisions on behalf of our community of 128,000.

It's an equally sobering thought that your chosen representatives have responsibility for $3.4 billion in assets, $300m of net debt, and $280m to be spent this year alone on services and infrastructure to keep our city functioning.

Last week I discussed the power your elected representatives have to direct our city – provided they don't focus on being bickering small-town celebrities. But does the Mayor have any special powers above councillors or is he just one of 11 votes? In a budget adoption the Mayor has just one vote plus a casting vote in the case of a tie. That's always been the case but in 2012 Parliament acknowledged that too much power had been delegated to council officials since the 1989 reforms and gave stronger powers to Mayors in 2012.

The Mayor has power to appoint a deputy – congratulations to Kelvin Clout for a second term – and committee chairs. But the real ability to shape our city comes from the Mayor's ability to lead the development of council's budget rather than react to a staff-generated one. Mayor Crosby chose not to exercise this power during his last term. To get on top of rates rising faster than inflation we need Mayor Brownless to step up and present a 'zero-based budget” to his councilors.