Brian Anderson The Western Front www.sunlive.co.nz

Local Government New Zealand's release of council debt figures and ranking across the country was the start of the openness and transparency required from all councils before the next local body elections.

This move was unexpected, but appears to be a message to councils who were supposed to be opening their books and have been a little slow to comply.

The new openness is to allow the public more time to understand their council's working and be more involved in local body issues and decisions with more community participation – rather than token community consultation.

Let's write our report

We had better get started. We can have a dummy run now. As just a columnist, I can't write the report. It has to come from the public. A report on any large organisation has a statistics section, followed by three key questions. Your questions are:

What is council doing well? What has council achieved that could be celebrated and used as a model for other councils.

What can it do better? What council's project, policy or procedures are under way, that are on the right track, but are in need of more action.

What is needed urgently now? This could mean urgent attention to correct some failure to meet a statutory obligation or a recommendation – similar to the previously mentioned – a change of focus from wasteful projects to core infrastructure services.

The report will not be criticising any individuals in council. Anyone, in or out of council now has an opportunity to make positive suggestions for the future. I will close the submissions on September 15. Anonymous contributions will be considered. I will not release names of contributors, but I will only be collecting your responses and summarise them in this paper. There is no need for a form and you do not have to answer all three questions. We only need to consider topics, priorities and direction and hope we will see the start of more openness transparency and public participation in our community.

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