A shared services association which has saved Bay of Plenty ratepayers hundreds of thousands of dollars through bulk-buying has peaked, says Tauranga Mayor Stuart Crosby.

Photo: file.

Stuart says council-controlled organisation Bay of Plenty Local Authority Shared Services – known as Boplass Ltd – has virtually peaked in ability to make significant change.

Boplass Ltd consists of nine councils in the wider Bay of Plenty and Gisborne regions co-operating to reduce costs through negotiating bulk-buys.

This week Tauranga City Council's City Vision Committee moved to receive Boplass Ltd's statement of intent for the financial year.

Boplass Ltd is run by a directorate of CEOs of nine participating councils, with each project managed by an advisory group nominated by shareholding councils in that particular service. Participation is decided by each council on an opt-in basis.

Stuart says Boplass Ltd has done some wonderful stuff in terms of procurement.

'There are some more identified projects and some identified shared services projects for consideration.

'My view is that with the current government arrangements it's not going to go any further.

'It's going to continue to do a good job around these areas, but it's not going to be given the ability to get into the more meatier problems of local government delivery,” says Stuart.

'What will change the world is when we start to collaborate and do joint service delivery, and joint customer service across boundaries – and that requires getting into another council's sovereignty. And that's the role of the governance of those councils, not the role of the chief executive.

Stuart says that's why, in his view, Boplass has done a good job. 'It continues to do a good job at this level, but it's never going to go any further.”

Having an independent director on board, a change introduced this year, is not going to change things, say Stuart.

He's looking forward to developing a vehicle in some shape or form where councils can really talk about effectiveness and efficiencies across other council services.

Because of the limitations Boplass Ltd will never be able to consider the big ticket items: water, stormwater, sewerage and transport – areas where Stuart says collaboration 'really can create opportunities for potential savings”.

Boplass Ltd was established as a CCO in 2007 to investigate, develop and deliver back-office services and communications for the councils in the region.

It operates over a regional one gigabit fibre network linking councils in Tauranga, Rotorua, Whakatane and Taupo.

Benefits include opportunities for data storage management, server consolidation – for instance libraries share a single index of book titles across the region – and application sharing, for example shared calendars and video-conferencing, which improve collaboration.