Councillors voted last week to reduce the Lakes District's three wards to two by abolishing the Arrowtown ward and councillor and establishing the district's second community board after Wanaka, as part of its representation review.
The move was seen to some degree as a ripple effect from when borough and county councils, such as Arrowtown, were amalgamated into larger districts in 1989.
The Local Electoral Act set out how representation arrangements in each district were to be determined, council corporate and regulatory services manager Roger Taylor told the Otago Daily Times.
There were three criteria, which all had to be considered by the council.
"Communities of interest" required the council to ask what were the various communities which existed in the district and the places people felt an affiliation. Arrowtown residents felt affiliated with Arrowtown as a separate entity to all other communities, Mr Taylor said.
"Effective representation" assessed whether the representation arrangements proposed provided reasonable access of community members to an elected member, so they could express their opinions or concerns.
"Fair representation" required the whole district population to be divided by the proposed number of councillors to give an average number of constituents per elected member.
Mr Taylor said, as an example, there were 30,000 district residents and 10 councillors to represent them. There would be on average 3000 constituents per councillor overall with a plus or minus of 10%.
"If there was an Arrowtown ward and 3000 people living in the Arrowtown ward and there was to be one ward councillor, then that would work because the numbers would be exactly the same. The numbers in the Arrowtown ward could vary from 2700 up to 3300 and we would still be in the plus or minus 10%," he said.
In the Arrowtown ward as it was at present configured, the population fell below the lower 10% threshold.
Therefore by law a councillor could not be constituted from that ward and a proposal could not be processed because all three criteria had to be met.
Mr Taylor said the preferred alternative proposal, decided last week, would be open for community feedback. It was not the council's definitive position, he said.
"Here's what we think is the best of a bad lot. Tell us what you think about that and here are some alternatives for you to consider as well," he said.
The proposal put forward was that Arrowtown residents would have their say in electing six councillors from the Wakatipu ward and elect community board members as village advocates to the council in the interests of fair representation under legislation.
Mr Taylor said it was possible Arrowtown would not have a voice around the council table if no councillors living in the village were elected. However, it was equally possible a candidate from Arrowtown would be elected in the Wakatipu ward and there had been previous examples of this happening, even with an Arrowtown ward.
When pointed out a community board was still not the same as having a ward councillor, Mr Taylor said although he understood the emotion of the argument, all councillors swore an oath and had statutory obligations to make decisions for the good governance of the district as a whole, not in the interests of their ward.
The proposed Arrowtown Community Board could be established in time for local body elections in October 2013.
There would be at least four elected and paid members who would elect a chairperson within their membership, and they would decide how often they met.
Wanaka board members met every six weeks.
Mr Taylor said board members answered to their community and expressed the community's views to the council.
The council may delegate some powers to the board.
Board establishment costs amounted to one voting paper replacing another, but board members' pay would be determined by the remuneration authority and partly funded by central Government and partly by local government rates, Mr Taylor said.
"The cost to the community of an Arrowtown board would be greater than what the cost of the remuneration of the ward councillor is."
The four directly elected board members in Wanaka were paid about $10,000 each a year and one councillor was paid about $23,000 a year. Local rates covered these costs.
"Cost is not a criterion for representation review. Yes, it might cost more, it might cost less. The issues to be considered are communities of interest, effective representation and fair representation."
The statement of proposal was expected to go public this week and people were encouraged to engage in the process, Mr Taylor said.
"Council is bound by the Local Electoral Act and is not able to ignore what the Act says."
