Matt Cowley Tauranga City Councillor

Councils in the wider Bay of Plenty region are deciding whether to co-fund a project looking at better ways to deliver local government services in the BOP.

Councils have a duty to residents to ensure we're delivering our services in the most cost-effective manner.

Since Tauranga City Council has the highest population and owns almost half of the region's total local government assets – about $6 billion total assets across the BOP – we decided on Monday to contribute $143,500 towards the $500,000 project.

The project will focus on collating factual information about councils' services. The project aims to provide an informed debate if anyone wants to submit an application to the Local Government Commission to reorganise councils in the region.

Any individual or group can submit an application to the Local Government Commission to reorganise a council or councils.

But it's not easy to put together a good application, as the legislation has many hoops to jump through. For instance, the commission will not look at an application until it's satisfied there is 'demonstrable community support in the district of each affected territorial authority” for the application. Although, there is no definition for ‘demonstrable community support'.

There have been vocal residents in Waihi Beach wanting to become part of the Thames Coromandel District Council area.

If this happens, it would trigger the Local Government Commission to look at the structure of both Tauranga and Western Bay of Plenty councils because the commission will only ‘reorganise' a council once every 20 years.

To pre-empt your emails asking for my opinion; at this stage, I believe some of Tauranga City Council's services could be better delivered across all councils in the region – and possibly the Waikato – while other services could be delivered at a ward level to reflect local needs. I don't believe Auckland's one-size-fits-all approach would work here.

But I eagerly await the outcomes of the project so we can all have an informed debate, which is due in June 2015.

Feel free to email me your thoughts (matt.cowley@tauranga.govt.nz), call/text me on 027 6989 548, and follow me at www.facebook.com/a.younger.voice.