Cr Bill Faulkner Faulkners Corner www.sunlive.co.nz

The new council has begun its term with two informal discussions designed to lay out the way forward.
First was a day retreat where items such as the ‘Code of Conduct', ‘Governance Structure', ‘Standing Orders', and working together were discussed.

General discussions like this are very helpful in arriving at a consensus out of the glare of the media and in a non threatening environment.
Things are off to a harmonious start with none of the acrimony that arose at the beginning of the previous term. This augurs well for the future.
That's not to say that everyone is going to agree on everything – far from it – we are all elected independently and have independent views on how best to represent those who elected us. From previous experience there is an electoral honeymoon period that lasts until about March next year.
This may be shortened this time as staff have advised us that the draft annual plan will be brought forward from the end of January to early December. This will mean a pressure cooker run-up to the Christmas break.
Staff told us that by bringing the process forward will allow more time for alterations down the track. It's hard to follow that because public submissions will be taken at the same time as last year and deliberations on those submissions will also be the same as last year – mid May. The final decisions are around June 24 so bringing the draft forward by six weeks or so means elected members have much less time and opportunity to consider what goes into the first draft.
The second session we had was a long introduction for elected members by a consultant on good governance, good decision making and the like. As we have all been on council before, (except Tony Christiansen, who was at the time away, fulfilling previously booked speaking engagements) it was of limited use, but we had a few laughs and some interesting issues were raised. Once again out of the spotlight it may have helped ease us into a functional working unit.

No change for change's sake
Committee structures will be decided at the council meeting on November 17 and it is not anticipated there will be a great change from last term. Last term's committee structure worked well and as the next three years forward plans show a similar pattern, then it probably makes sense to not change for change's sake.
Major issues, draft annual plan aside, coming up are Route K tolling, government's leaky homes financial assistance package, Historic Village future, and TCVL (Baypark) finance and structural arrangements and Settlement of Treaty local claims by government to name a few.
The leaky homes disaster has the potential to really load up ratepayers with unplanned debt and unwanted rates increases. Treaty claims could also impact council with Maori seeking council assets (out of the government settlement package).

Picking holes in policy
There are a raft of minor issues coming up like Botanic Gardens, graffiti funding, relationship agreements for Creative Tauranga and Sport BOP and other issues of public concern like CBD parking charges.
That's a vexed question. Some downtown retailers are laying council parking policy as a big part of their business woes. Council certainly has a role in facilitating parking management, but could it also be that there are other reasons for the woes – like pricing yourself out of the market, the ongoing downturn, GST increase etc?
Rents in the suburban malls include the ‘free parking'. Perhaps a ‘Parking Rate' collected by council will achieve the same amenity for the downtown. But then there is the matter of how you police it. Adjacent to a time limited parking area in downtown is an operation that has about 30 people regularly observed shifting cars all day to comply with the time limit. That means no new parking is available all day for the public but it's quite legal.