Listen, I don’t often bring my work home & share it, but I’ve just spent the past two days off work, and attending to my meeting duties as an elected member of the Otago regional council.
For a long, long time I have opined that local government in NZ is run by, and for, the bureaucrats. That elected governors play increasingly lesser roles in decision-making and that they are effectively sidelined by senior local government managers in a variety of ways. It’s the reason that people don’t vote in local elections, or make submissions to annual plans and the like. The public well understand that their input, and their elected reps, make bugger all difference to the local government machine.
But on Wednesday past, that belief/prejudice received dramatic confirmation around my council table.
