At today’s infrastructure services committee meeting, members will consider a motion from chairman Jim O’Malley asking for a report on moving some council services, including "green spaces and roading-related infrastructure provision", in-house.
"I’m hoping that what you find is that we should be able to deliver it probably a little bit cheaper and more responsive to the community," Cr O’Malley said.
"There was an experiment to take some stuff out of house and contract it — I think you’ll find that some of that stuff was better in-house."
Christchurch City Council had brought parks maintenance in-house last year and found it "particularly successful", Cr O’Malley said.
At the moment, Dunedin’s park and roadside maintenance was contracted out to to companies such as Delta but "anomalies" cropped up when maintenance relied on maps and contracts, rather than what best served the community, he said.
His motion also requested a report on contracting members of the rural community for some services.
Cr O’Malley sat on the Waikouaiti Coast Community Board and said there had been a "big call" for more responsive maintenance than the contract system delivered.
"It just gets back to more a way that people were used to 20 or 30 years ago when ... the people who did that maintenance were locals that you knew."
If his motion passed, Cr O’Malley expected the report after October’s local body election.
