Board-room farces can be avoided

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 13, Issue 614, 28 November 1995, Page 6

Board-room farces can be avoided

Is training provided for community board members on the workings of the council? We say the current issue surrounding the Orautoha Transfer Station highlights a need for some sort of coaching for the community boards so they can be effective. Here we have an issue that has been around a long time. The Waimarino Community Board have had ample scope to sound out the local community' s wishes, yet it seems they got it dead wrong (see story this issue, re: public meeting and petition). We agree with Chris Ryan (see letters, this issue) that one of the community board' s roles is to be part of the community consultation process. They are elected to represent the local people. If the board' s recommendation does not reflect the views of the majority of the local people then they are not doing their job properly. Thankfully, it seems that in this case the botch-up can be fixed. We say next time the council and the board should get it right first time as this kind of merry-go-round is too costly. Some community board members in the past seemed to think their job was to talk round and round issues into the wee small hours at their once-monthly meeting. Their role is more than that. We would like to see more of them spend time researching issues (some already do). If they do that effectively they will make better decisions and avoid the need for many of the expensive reports from council officers. It's not a one-way process though. Members of the public who have a problem shouldn' t wait to be asked what their views are. Their board members are accessible, or should be, and they should make their views known early on, possibly to more than one member to be sure. We'd like to do our job better too, to make sure issues are well covered during. the debating stage. If board members need to gauge public opinion on an issue, they are free to use our public forum — the letters columns — more often. And if a reader thinks an issue isn't being covered, we'd like to hear about it.