I’ve always felt that the Bluff Community Board don’t communicate well with Council on our behalf, the process is available within Standing Orders but all too often it’s the standard, “I’ll ring them tomorrow”. That might work but that is communicating with the the staff. A resolution within the minutes is the way Standing Orders expects it to be done. Keep in mind that the Councillors ‘receive the minutes’ (and other councils also ‘accept the recommendations’). I doubt the councillors actually read the minutes sometimes and feel it’s necessary that the agenda be read in conjunction with the minutes. I don’t know if they do read the agenda or not. I do know some absolutely moronic things have been in minutes of the board and gone through a council meeting with no comment other than ‘the minutes be received’. Needless to say I believe there needs to be improvement and have looked at other councils and our own and their committees and reports.
To me, it seemed that the best way would be to directly address a council meeting after each board meeting to highlight issues and needs. Public Forum can accommodate this reporting but being a legally declared ‘community of interest’, Bluff Community Board should have better opportunities than the average resident. They represent 1791 (2008 census) residents.
My brain kept processing a better way for the Board to communicate (must say that most of the problem has been the ineptness of the past board and council).
Each council meeting has on the agenda, ‘Report of the Youth Council’, why do the Youth Council, not constituted in law, have a better opportunity to be heard than an entity constituted under Local Electoral Act 2001? They submit a report to each meeting which has comment about each committee of council, they have the opportunity through this report and when speaking on it (usually two co-chairs) to express their views and opinions. They have a captive audience of twelve councillors, the mayor and staff whereas the board minutes are unconfirmed and the board have to rely on the minute taker to have summarised the proceedings accurately and if the board later makes changes to those minutes it will be six weeks before they come to council. Those meetings are also controlled by Standing Orders and based on specific topics whereas a ‘report’ could include anything the Board chooses and wants to highlight. So the end result is that we have in Invercargill, a Youth Council with a better form of communication than a community board.
It seems to me that the Youth Council have a better relationship with council altogether. Our council has also been investigating adding Youth Council representatives to a committee that administers hundreds of thousands of dollars, ICC provides significant opportunities for training and education of the Youth Council and I’ve even seen ICC revisit decisions because of Youth Council views.
There needs to be dramatic changes in the way the board and council work together. When a group of kids not old enough to vote have more sway with ICC than six elected members, who can’t even get and few benches or rubbish bins out of ICC, there might be need for some relationship counselling.
The Youth in Local Government Leadership Conference will be an exciting event, and our region is pleased to be hosting it.
