Jane Nees BOP Regional Councillor www.janenees.co.nz

The Bay of Plenty Regional Council is undertaking a business improvement programme across the organisation to seek economies and efficiencies in the way we do things, while still delivering high quality outcomes.

It is aligned to the new purpose of local government to deliver good-quality local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions in a way that is most cost-effective for households and businesses.

One challenge is that the council is a distributed organisation spread over five sites (Tauranga, Mount Maunganui, Rotorua, Edgecumbe and Whakatane). The regional council still has its official headquarters in Whakatane, but it spreads its meetings across the region, alternating regular meetings in Tauranga, Whakatane and Rotorua This means that there is quite a bit of travel involved for both staff and elected officials. However, the council uses technology where it can to reduce the need to travel and to increase productivity. Where possible, council's video conferencing facilities are used to enable staff and councillors to participate in internal meetings without travelling long distances.

I find this works very well and it saves huge amounts of time and petrol. However, one area where this doesn't work is for formal council and committee meetings where the Local Government Act prevents a councillor from voting if they are not physically present. During the years, Local Government New Zealand has sought changes to this legislation to enable remote participation in meetings by elected officials, but to no avail. With today's technology, this is very short-sighted. I hope the next phase of local government reform will address this to align with the new purpose of local government.

If you have views on this or any other issue, please email me:neesj@xtra.co.nz or ring me on: 07 579 5150. Or you can check out my website: www.janenees.co.nz