Mr Clark will present a paper to Southland District Mayor Rob Scott and Environment Southland chairman Nicol Horrell at tomorrow’s mayoral forum, with the idea to build or lease a building where all councils could work.
All three councils had buildings in Invercargill and he believed they shared similar concerns with their offices such as outdated construction which was not earthquake proof.
"What I’m looking to do is trying to identify, going forward, whether there’s an appetite with the other two councils as we all seem to have issues with our buildings.
"Would it be smart to do a ... building together? Do we want to be housed together so we could share reception, building inspectors, IT or whatever? So I will formally ask the councils whether they have any desire to get together."
He said if his counterparts were not interested, the city council would still need to pursue another solution as its building was no longer fit for purpose.
Mr Clark believed just to fix the problems with the city council building would cost $20 million to $30m.
"The building is . . . not in very good shape — the heating is not good, it leaks, the windows are not good. It’s really, really poorly laid out.
"So there’ll be a whole lot of work [which] would have to go on and I’m not sure that we should invest that sort of money."
He said it did not mean the council needed to build a new office, but maybe look at leasing an existing space or seeing if someone else had interest in building so the councils could lease it.
"It just seems smart to be in the same building."
Mr Scott said he received mixed feedback from fellow councillors about the idea, but no formal conversation had happened just yet.
He believed it was worth looking into.
"We’ve already got shared services with the likes of the emergency management staff, Wastenet, for example — we don’t need to be in the same building to share services.
"But I think it’s something that we should explore. I’m certainly open to having a look at how something like that might work. It is something that’s worth exploring."
Mr Horrell said with the Future of Local Government Report out, a lot of councils would be looking at how they could work better together.
"As a concept it is worth exploring as we all have ageing buildings. It doesn’t mean amalgamation; there are efficiencies to made through shared services."
