{"id":435916,"date":"2026-05-20T01:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T01:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/435916\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T01:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T01:27:08","slug":"opotiki-mayor-david-moore-warns-council-amalgamation-will-not-mean-cheaper-rates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/435916\/","title":{"rendered":"\u014cp\u014dtiki Mayor David Moore warns council amalgamation will not mean cheaper rates"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 5, RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop, who is also the Infrastructure Minister, and Local Government Minister Simon Watts gave councils three months to put forward proposals<\/a> on how they would work with other councils.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur message to councils is simple: lead your own reform, or we will do it for you. Either way, change is coming,\u201d Bishop said.<\/p>\n

The announcement followed a Government proposal in November to simplify local government, which included replacing elected regional councillors with Combined Territories Boards composed of mayors.<\/p>\n

Moore said Tuesday was his first opportunity to speak with all the \u014cp\u014dtiki District councillors, which was why he had not made any comment in the media earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not the sort of person who will speak out on behalf of [the] council without consulting with our team,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no mistake that this is about amalgamation. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe desperately want to get information out to the community and bring them into the fold. These aren\u2019t discussions we wanted to have. It\u2019s not something we are choosing to do, but we\u2019re going to have to have them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very clear that the status quo is not an option. It will be forced on us and we are working closely with our Eastern Bay colleagues to see if there is a proposal that we can put together, because we want to have some control over the outcome.<\/p>\n

\u201dThe most likely outcome at this stage would be an Eastern Bay subregion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore said the timeframe posed a serious challenge to get messages out to the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really want to have input from our community and our iwi partners, but the timeframe is so tight that, realistically, there\u2019s no way we can possibly do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said even if the three Eastern Bay councils put a proposal in, it still might not get approval.<\/p>\n

\"EasternEastern Bay of Plenty councils Whakat\u0101ne (pictured), \u014cp\u014dtiki and Kawerau already work together on some services. Photo \/ Andrew Warner<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first priority is to get out and talk to our own community. But this isn\u2019t three months to do consultation. This is three months to get a plan together.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess there\u2019s mayors brave enough to do this without consultation. I personally think that\u2019s the wrong thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore urged people wanting to have a say about council amalgamations to contact their local MP.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy all means, share [your view] with your local councils, but also share it with your MP.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be views either way, but don\u2019t be thinking this will bring cheaper rates. You\u2019re going to lose the voice of small communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no cost savings [from amalgamation]. There isn\u2019t the evidence to show that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore said the three Eastern Bay councils already worked well together on a shared spatial plan, shared services and were looking into a shared water entity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re doing all these things anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mayor said a lack of pushback from other political parties on the announcement was concerning.<\/p>\n

\u201cLabour has made no pushback. I would be interested to hear what other political parties thought about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they have been silent. All of our districts should be asking that question.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore said there were things the Government could have done to make things easier on councils.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is another unfunded mandate. We\u2019ve got to do this body of work on top of everything else we do. They\u2019re not giving us permission to pause our long-term or annual plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome councils are doing representation reviews, which is pretty pointless, considering those councils may no longer exist. It\u2019s interesting times.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On May 5, RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop, who is also the Infrastructure Minister, and Local Government Minister…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[101475,1970,6434,4187,5205,7558,6284,6435,22220,7240,10934,29391,60,111,43,139,5006,69,193,669,25718,7676,4578,8218,1533,102],"class_list":["post-435916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-amalgamation","tag-believe","tag-cheaper","tag-cost","tag-council","tag-councils","tag-david","tag-does","tag-going","tag-lead","tag-mayor","tag-mean","tag-moore","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-not","tag-nz","tag-other","tag-ptiki","tag-ratepayers","tag-rates","tag-savings","tag-warns","tag-will","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}