Representation review 2021: Who will speak for you?

Help shape our district’s democratic system

Council’s role includes acting as the voice of local people. That voice should represent all people who use and/or contribute to the facilities and services provided by Council. It must be able to represent and balance differing interests. And because Council’s democratic system is funded by rates, it’s important the community feels their interests are represented fairly and effectively.

In order to ensure councils continue to provide fair and effective representation for individuals and communities, they’re required by law (the Local Electoral Act 2001), to review their elected representation arrangements at least every six years.

Our last review was in 2015, so we’re checking in with our community again in 2021. Once final, the updated representation arrangements will stay in effect for six years (two election cycles) or until the next review.

Look out for updates in early 2021 about how you can get involved in the review.

What the review includes

We’ll be checking in with our community on the following topics:

1. Identifying communities of interest.
2. The total number of councillors there should be for the district.
3. Deciding whether councillors are elected from wards or ‘at large’ across the whole district, or by a mix of both wards and ‘at large’.
4. The boundaries of wards and constituencies, and their names.
5. Whether there should be community boards in the district and, if so, the number of boards; their names and boundaries; the number of members for each board including any appointed members.

Councillors have already agreed other parts of the review:

• not to include a Māori ward for electoral purposes, and
• to maintain the Single Transferable Voting (STV) system, and
• to run a Council-led representation review process.

The process

Several dates for the review are set down by the Local Government Commission. In order to ensure we meet those dates, we will follow the process outlined below:

Communities of interest

The review includes identifying ‘Communities of interest’ for fair and effective representation. A community of interest is a group of people who have a common geographical, economic, social, historical or other bond.

Communities of interest can be identified as being where people feel they belong; where they live, work, shop, go to school and play.

Kapiti Coast residents are very mobile and often move between communities while they ‘live, work and play’. Many people live in one community and commute to work or shop in another.

Number of councillors and how they’re elected

Kāpiti Coast District Council currently has 10 councillors; five are elected by ward (a geographical area) and five are elected ‘at large’ (to represent the whole district):

To consider

As part of the review, we’ll ask residents if they’d like councillors to be elected from wards or ‘at large’ across the whole district, or by a mix of both wards and ‘at large’.

Comparison of similar-sized councils

While can be helpful to compare our council make-up to similar-sized councils, it’s useful to remember that each council’s arrangements are influenced by their own history, geography and politics.

* The populations used are the estimated resident population as at 30 June 2020 provided by the Statistics NZ and use the 2018 census as their base.

Community Boards

Kapiti Coast has four Community Boards: Ōtaki, Paraparaumu/Raumati, Waikanae and Paekākāriki. Each has four members, making a total of 16 Community Board members.  Initially, our Community Boards were set up to represent distinctive communities in our geographically-spread towns of Ōtaki and Paekākāriki. Waikanae was the next Community Board to be added, and in 2004, the Local Government Commission recommended that Paraparaumu-Raumati residents also be represented by a Community Board.

The role of Community Boards

A Community Board’s role is to represent the interests of their community to the Council. It also has powers to make some decisions about issues within its boundaries.  Boards make submissions to Council and other statutory agencies. They also make grants to local individuals and groups for community purposes.

Board representatives can sit at Council meetings and contribute to the debate but do not have voting rights. Their contribution helps ensure Council takes account of what each local community wants as they make decisions.

To consider

As part of the review, residents can tell us if they support the existing arrangement of Community Boards, or if they’d like to see changes, and if so what changes they’d like.

Compared to similar sized councils:

* The populations used are the estimated resident population as at 30 June 2020 provided by the Statistics NZ and use the 2018 census as their base.

The cost of representation

Councillors and Community Board members are paid to attend meetings and are reimbursed for some costs. The ‘Elected Members Remuneration Expenses and Allowances Policy’ is on our website.

The cost to rate payers of representation is fixed. Elected Members share the fixed amount, so if there are more elected members, each will receive less remuneration.

For more information about our Review email [email protected]

For more general information about Representation Reviews, visit the Local Government Commission’s webpage.