Wairarapa merger looms in 2017
Wellington’s region should get ready for Wairarapa on steroids.
The Local Government Commission will next year likely propose merging Wairarapa’s three councils into one super-district council, and says it has the backing of the community for change.
If the Wairarapa merger went ahead then there would be an election for the new Wairarapa District Council in late 2018.
The first crop of councillors and mayor would have four years in office to bring them in line with the local government election cycle.
It would mean mayors and councillors from Masterton, Carterton and South Wairarapa district councils elected this October might have only two years in office.
The commission will likely release a draft proposal early next year, would consult on this, then release a final proposal mid-year for a combined Wairarapa council. This could be at the mercy of a poll in late 2017, triggered by anyone who could gain the support of 10 per cent of the voters in any of the affected councils.
More than half the votes would be needed to get the merger over the line.
The proposal comes after the commission ditched its investigation into a super city for the Wellington region in 2015, which would have amalgamated all nine councils into one giant entity.
That application by Greater Wellington Regional Council in 2013 came a month after Wairarapa’s three councils proposed to split off, combine, and run everything themselves from public transport to water.
The region-wide super city fell over after a backlash from the community, but the Wairarapa application was never dead: instead the commission kept working on it, including running surveys in June and earlier this month.
The majority of people surveyed support a super-district council, but baulked at cutting off the rest of the region as proposed three years ago.
Commission chair Sir Wira Gardiner said, in response, the commission would work with the Masterton, Carterton and South Wairarapa councils ‘‘on the detail of this option’’.
He said this would run alongside work on the ‘‘formal relationship’’ between this Wairarapa council and Greater Wellington, which runs the region’s public transport, environmental management and flood protection.
A commission questionnaire, found 65 per cent favoured a merger.
It comes as the commission confirmed it had ditched any work on merging other parts of the region, such as a potential marriage of Wellington City and Porirua.