Brian Anderson The Western Front www.sunlive.co.nz

Trying to move a Council is a little like trying to beat up a marshmallow. It looks sweet, bends with your every advance but is totally unchanged at the end of the exercise.

Councils, to be fair, have similar stories about the difficulties they have when trying to communicate with us. We know committees are not the answer so we have to put up with one way Council briefings of the type arranged in April for the Long Term Plan presentations in centres around the Western Bay. Discussion will not be allowed and any challenges will be met with an instruction to put your submission in writing before the end of the month. This could be all very depressing for any resident wanting hoping to toast our marshmallow council. A new approach for public forums has started across New Zealand. The 64 Christchurch Council ‘committees' include a number of public forums. Monthly Citizen Forums have started also in the Auckland that offer a new concept for council openness and accountability. The forums allow the public to put a little democratic heat on a Council and can offer a significant improvement in the way the public communicates with councils.

The major change in the way these forums work is that they are community inspired and organized voice of the people. ‘Local solutions by local people' takes on a new meaning when individuals can be heard, gain support for their ideas and know that when the forum speaks that their offerings have contributed to a local voice and direction.

The Tauranga Harbour Recreation Forum has no committee is structured the same way. It is an attendees' forum. The meeting decides what topic is important and should be discussed and the findings are reported in a newsletter to over 300 people. The monthly on line newsletters are distributed to local bodies and Councillors as well. Regional Council and all other Key Partners have been keen to take part and use this forum for communicating and sharing their ideas with the public on harbour and access issues. WBOPDCouncil has been a little slow but the Mayor has just appointed councillors as representatives on the forum. We are not sure that the councillors have let themselves in for. If they have nothing to contribute and are there just to report back to the Mayor as he indicated in a recent news item, the Mayor has missed the whole point of the forum and put his councillors on a very hot seat.

The new draft strategy being developed through SmartGrowth indicates in its preamble that one of the new challenges that Council will have to recognise is ‘an increased public scrutiny.' The spatial planning model for councils being pushed by the Government does involve larger council areas that demand a delegation of authority to local communities in a way that WBOPDC is yet to come to terms with. Already groups in Katikati and TePuke have been coming together with local solutions for their community. The open forum approach is after all probably the oldest form of democracy and now is the time for any resident with ideas to come and have their say for change in their community. Council has to listen. You realise that toasted mashmallows are sticky caramel which can be difficult to handle when eating but the taste is worth it.