ORC wants more say on South Dunedin

Otago regional councillors want be more actively involved in decision-making about the future of South Dunedin.

For the past 15 years, the regional council has done technical work to understand the physical environment of South Dunedin and the city’s harbourside area, including how climate change might affect it, with the aim of developing a climate change adaptation plan for the areas.

It has shared this work with the Dunedin City Council, which leads the South Dunedin Future work programme, which over the next two years aims to develop an overall plan for the suburb.

That work has a heavy focus on involving the community in any plans.

While the regional council and the city council collaborated to ensure their separate work was aligned, the work was not linked and instead progressed in parallel, a report to the regional council’s strategy and planning committee meeting today says.

Regional councillors recently expressed a desire to be actively involved in the decision-making on any adaptation for South Dunedin and the harbourside that would be informed by its work.

They asked staff to come up with some options that would allow them to be more involved in such decision-making.

Staff have presented three options for councillors to consider today: the status quo; a joint oversight group involving elected members from both councils; or an oversight group and a fully integrated programme of work with the city council, including agreed objectives, scope and shared resources.

The latter option would cost the regional council $50,000 a year.

The option agreed on would need to then be talked through with the city council to identify resourcing and funding options before the full regional council would make a final decision.