Yesterday Tauranga City Council adopted a new structure for its standing committees, aligning with the recently revised organisational structure. The new committee structure aims to better support decision-making and delivery of the Council's key priorities: housing supply, transport, resilience and infrastructure needs of a rapidly growing city.

The new committee structure more clearly separates strategic from operations, to better enable the strategic conversations required to set the future direction for the city. The operations will be separately governed through a committee dedicated to implementing, managing resourcing and monitoring the progress of projects, services and operations.

The standing committees, in addition to Council, are now:

• the Urban Form and Transport Development Committee
• the Policy Committee
• the Projects, Services and Operations Committee
• the Finance, Audit and Risk Committee.

Mayor Greg Brownless says that the new structure will help focus on the toughest challenges facing council and the city.

'We need to enable more housing, and to do so we need to get our transport network right – with the support of the Government”, Mayor Brownless said.

'We can't achieve one without the other, and bringing these topics together in our decision-making structure will ensure we, and the next Council, keep this correlation top of mind.”

The four new committees replace the Audit, Finance, Risk and Monitoring Committee, City Transformation Committee, Community and Culture Committee, Economic Development and Investment Committee, Environment Committee, and Transport Committee.

Each new committee will include the mayor and all councillors (committees of the whole) and will meet every six weeks.

Council also agreed that the membership of each committee will continue to include a non-voting Tangata Whenua representative, as was the case in most committees under the previous structure.

'This reflects the valued relationship between Council and the Mana Whenua of Tauranga Moana”, said Mayor Brownless.

Mayor Brownless thanked the chairs, deputy chairs and non-voting members of previous committees for their time and contributions – and the chairs and deputies appointed to the new committees.

The new committees, their roles and chairpersons are as follows:

Urban Form and Transport Development Committee

Shapes and manages the direction of growth of the city. Particular areas of focus include land availability and transport networks to support the growth of the city and sub-region.
Chairperson: Cr. Larry Baldock
Deputy chairperson: Cr. Rick Curach

Policy Committee

Develops the framework that shapes the direction of the city and sub-region. Includes Long Term and Annual Plans, policies and bylaws.
Chairperson: Cr. Steve Morris
Deputy chairperson: Cr. Terry Molloy

Projects, Services and Operations Committee

Monitors, reviews and enables the progress of the council's activities, projects and services.
Chairperson: Cr. Leanne Brown
Deputy chairperson: Cr. Max Mason

Finance, Audit and Risk Committee

Ensures risk management, internal controls and financial management practices, frameworks and processes are robust, appropriate and safeguard the council's financial and non-financial assets.
Chairperson: Cr. John Robson
Deputy chairperson: Cr. Kelvin Clout

The new structure and meeting schedules are effective from Monday 11 March 2019.