I woke up this morning at 9:00 am and went for my walk – once again the weather is fine although the temperature overnight has been getting down to the low single digits. I’ve got my heater going at the moment which has kept inside a comfortable temperature but I long for a time where I don’t need to turn on the heater and just enjoy the wonderful warmth of summer.
When it comes to news, once again we have the government having to slow down their plan of amalgamating city councils together (link). The government had laid down a three month deadline for coming up with a plan – maybe the government have realised that merging together city councils (something I support btw – personally we should merged all the councils together in each region so then we have provincial councils with a premier and assembly (kind of like a state) rather than city councils) is actually a little more complex than barking orders from Wellington then things magically happening.
When you merge together city councils you have to deal with the various contracts that have been signed between the private sector and the council, how do you merge the various computer systems together such a library all the way through to back office functions. Then there are the things like the cloud based systems – one council may have a server room themselves, another may use Microsoft 365 etc. how do you bring all that information together into a single system while maintaining the legal requirements regarding transparency when OIA requests are made.
That doesn’t even touch on the various bylaws – there are going to be overlaps between the various laws so how do you decide which to keep, which to modify? Then there are funding issues – how to do you ensure that rural areas receive adequate funding for infrastructure such as roads and the three waters (drinking water, storm water and sewage)? then there are council offices, what functions do you consolidate while ensuring that there is still an office for residents to get assistance with council related matters?
