Dancing in the dark; data and the Wellington City Council

In April this year, I read one too many articles about how our rates were being misspent, and finally snapped. I asked my husband: “If I run for Council, will you divorce me?” He said: “No, that’s a great idea.”

In typical Hayley fashion, I laid out all the goals and started figuring how best to achieve them with a thrifty budget. Step one was an intensive research phase, since evidence is essential before making critical decisions. I read earthquake plans, and draft annual plans and long term plans. I was very happy to find a draft strategy to end homelessness in our city. I went out and talked to lots of suburban business owners and residents in my ward. Then I made some submissions.

One of my submissions was on the draft annual plan’s proposed changes to our libraries (namely, making hours consistent – for this read ‘losing some hours’ – and the total loss of Khandallah library services in the mornings). I have three and three quarter University Degrees and knew via hearsay that the Libraries had to make cuts in 2012, and it still wasn’t until after submissions closed that I learned (via the Public Service Association’s excellent submission) that $400,000, including eight librarians’ jobs, was to be cut from our libraries in the next year. Thinking I had perhaps missed it, I attacked both the draft annual and long term plans again. Then I got someone else to check too. At that point I realised that the media would have picked this up earlier if it was obvious, and that the search was futile.

It is vital, in a democracy, that citizens are able to access relevant data quickly and easily before they are asked to make decisions and thus submissions. This is basic stuff. I am willing to believe that this is a sin of omission, rather than anything sinister on the part of the City Council in general, but it has to stop.

In a modern, technological society, we should not have to request information from Democratic Services, or any part of local government; we should be able to e-mail or phone and be directed to a website containing the data, or given relevant report titles so that we can make an appointment with the Council Archives, and view the data there in person.

In a modern, educated society, our Councillors should be given accurate, properly analysed statistics, so that, before they meet with the Khandallah community, they are already aware that Khandallah library has an extraordinarily high usage per square metre of floor space.

In a modern, efficient Council, customer service staff should be aware that they can contact their own archives in order to help answer ratepayers’ questions.

I thought there was room for greater efficiently and transparency in Council processes when I started this campaign. Now I’m sure. Getting data from our City Council is like dancing in the dark.

ENDS

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