\u201cIt would probably be the easiest and safest,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
Northland\u2019s local government inter-council reform leadership group is expected to choose its preferred amalgamation structure <\/a>by the end of the month, before sending a high-level proposal to Wellington.<\/p>\n Cabinet is scheduled to consider this, if submitted, in September.<\/p>\n Whang\u0101rei District Council<\/a> (WDC), Far North District Council (FNDC), Kaipara District Council (KDC) and Northland Regional Council <\/a>(NRC) have committed to the process but are yet to formally choose which new council structure to back.<\/p>\n Northland Local Government Reform Elected Member Steering Group chair and Whang\u0101rei Mayor Ken Couper has from the outset said putting a \u201cBy Northland for Northland\u201d proposal to the Government makes sense, rather than having the Government later direct amalgamation.<\/p>\n Auckland is the only region in New Zealand to have, since the 1989 local government reforms, undergone major council amalgamation of the scale being pushed by the Government.<\/p>\n Auckland Council was created in 2010 by amalgamating eight councils.<\/p>\n Brown became Auckland mayor 12 years later.<\/p>\n Sixteen years on from the amalgamation, Brown said it had worked well.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone would undo that amalgamation,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n However, he was not in favour of council-owned companies \u2013 known as council-controlled organisations (CCOs) \u2013 that were created as part of the amalgamation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve slowly been getting rid of these.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown led an early push for council amalgamation in Northland during his six years as Far North mayor.<\/p>\n In 2012, FNDC and the Far North district local government working group lodged a reorganisation application with the Local Government Commission.<\/p>\n It proposed a unitary council combining FNDC district council and NRC regional council functions.<\/p>\n When considering the application, the commission widened its assessment to include the whole region and identified a single Northland-wide unitary authority replacing all four councils as its preferred option.<\/p>\n Northland would have moved to a single council structure more than a decade ago, had that proposal gone ahead.<\/p>\n However, in 2015 the commission decided not to proceed after strong community opposition.<\/p>\n Brown said while he favoured a single Northland council under the latest restructuring \u2013 \u201cit\u2019s about the Government\u2019s plans for large councils\u201d \u2013 he would not be particularly against Northland having a two unitary authority model.<\/p>\n The main thing was combining regional and district council responsibilities, he said.<\/p>\n Northland has four councils and about 200,000 people.<\/p>\n Brown said amalgamation was not just about population size.<\/p>\n And when it came to population, it was not just about assessing numbers in the depths of winter.<\/p>\n The population of places like the Far North increased hugely over summer and that needed to be taken into account, he said.<\/p>\n A single unitary authority combining WDC, KDC, FNDC and NRC is currently among the North\u2019s leading likely restructuring options.<\/p>\n Another option is for two unitary authorities \u2013 most likely one combining WDC and KDC with NRC functions and another combining FNDC and NRC functions.<\/p>\n Further options proposed by councils during recent informal community engagement also included a Whang\u0101rei-only unitary authority with a second combined Far North-Kaipara unitary authority, a Far North-Whang\u0101rei unitary authority, and a standalone Kaipara unitary authority, all with regional council functions.<\/p>\n \u25a0 LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt would probably be the easiest and safest,\u201d Brown said. Northland\u2019s local government inter-council reform leadership group is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1975,51,32319,3390,6256,5205,84537,266,7237,440,10934,51706,111,43,139,1067,69,90,11664,691,2171,16860,381,312,58218,9640,223,8238,3542,6438],"class_list":["post-509552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-at","tag-auckland","tag-backs","tag-best","tag-brown","tag-council","tag-either","tag-government","tag-governments","tag-local","tag-mayor","tag-menu","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-northland","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-option","tag-or","tag-plans","tag-reform","tag-region","tag-says","tag-single","tag-table","tag-the","tag-under","tag-wayne","tag-youre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509552","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=509552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}