With the government’s August 9 deadline for amalgamation options looming, Queenstown Lakes District Mayor John Glover said he accepted change would probably happen ‘‘down the line’’, but ‘‘the easiest thing for us would be to stay as we are’’.
‘‘It’s certainly the strongest outcome for maintaining local voice and, I guess, self-determination. The question is, ‘is that going to be an option?’
‘‘If councillors decided this was the best option, then we would have to show how that meets all the tests the government is placing on councils, because there’s a very clear directive that they want fewer councils.’’
Mr Glover said recent flooding in North Otago and parts of Dunedin supported his argument for a local voice.
‘‘You’ve had a mayor in Dunedin, you’ve had a mayor in Waitaki, they’ve been leading the public response, they’re somebody people know.
‘‘So how would that look if there was one mayor for the whole of Otago?’’
At the Otago Mayoral Forum meeting in Oamaru on Friday last week, Morrison Low Advisory presented options for reorganising local government across the region, with councils becoming ‘‘unitary’’ councils by taking on ORC’s roles
The first option was an Otago-wide unitary council.
The second option was for inland and coastal unitary councils — the former bringing the Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) and Central Otago District Council (CODC) together.
The third option was keeping the Queenstown and Dunedin City ‘‘urban’’ councils separate and amalgamating the three rural councils.
Mr Glover said none of those options presented financial savings ‘‘of any significance’’ over and above what they were already doing.
He also queried whether any other council would want to amalgamate with the QLDC.
‘‘I think Queenstown is seen as this brash kid on the block, and I think culturally some of the other councils don’t align with us on that basis,’’ Mr Glover said.
‘‘They love coming here for a holiday, but wouldn’t necessarily want to leap into bed with us.’’
Asked about joining up with its nearest-neighbour, the CODC, Mr Glover said: ‘‘The one thing everyone on CODC sees is we have a massive debt — they see our very high levels of debt and they’re worried about that.’’
That debt was caused by Queenstown’s very rapid growth, he said.
‘‘So how do we ring-fence that? Because that’s all the stuff that needs to be worked through. That’s why we need more time.’’
Mr Glover said he sensed councillors would be happy to take over ORC responsibilities such as public transport, but environmental oversight could be at risk of fragmenting if it was handed over to individual councils.
‘‘If I have to take a pulse of where councillors are thinking at the moment, I don’t think there’s an obvious solution that everyone’s ready to leap [to].
‘‘And so it’s how we signal to government, ‘we understand things are going to change, and this might be our thinking right now, but we need to work through a bit more stuff’.’’
