The local government elections might get messy

Oliver Neighbourly Lead from One Tree Point

Last week's Local Government Conference showed a promising focus on elected membership, co-governance and climate change. I am however worried that we might see a number of single-issue candidates in the upcoming local elections, who will exploit the current controversies around major initiatives and dominate the debates. The Three Waters reforms are the obvious choice for such tactics.
Past and present councils have shown foresight and made prudent decisions to secure excellent drinking water systems in our district. There is however no guarantee that it will forever stay like this and not be run into the ground, as it has happened in so many other districts all over NZ. WDC have unfortunately taken a very adversarial approach to the reforms, rather than deciding to support these, hand over our well-maintained water assets to the professionals, accept the offered rewards for a job well done, and quit while we're well ahead.
However, the narrative that WDC can keep doing it better and cheaper has now been seriously undermined by the recent 31% price hike in water consumption rates, due to the closure of the refinery. It is completely counterintuitive that the price goes up when demand goes down, it provides zero incentives for us to conserve water and reduce our usage, and it shows that WDC's financial governance of our water services hasn't been as prudent as claimed, by allowing a single large customer to cross-subsidise household connections. It is obvious that losing Refining NZ would have been just a blip and not have had such a large negative effect (if at all) on our water rates if we had already been part of the proposed "Northwater" Entity A.
Councils do not provide other utilities, like electricity and telecommunications services. We should ask ourselves what is so different about water services that councils would have to continue to be the ones to provide these, and we should strongly reject any campaign slogans that try to sell us more opposition and promise us rollback of the reforms. This is not the time for pretending to know better and going it all alone.
Given the division and misinformation around co-governance in general as well as the introduction of Māori wards we should also be prepared for further challenges to these developing changes and inoculate ourselves against any forms of propaganda and thinly-veiled racism.
Personally I will ignore any single-issue campaigners and only consider candidates who can present a credible pathway for a just and respectful transition to a circular, sustainable low-carbon economy in our district. Unfortunately our options might be limited, since the decision to elect all WDC councillors district-wide was overturned. We are once again confined to our wards and constituencies and stuck with the archaic First Past The Post voting system. If all I get to choose from were more dairy farmers, businessmen and long-term incumbents selling us Past As Future and Back To Normal, then I might not even bother voting.