The Rangitikei Environmental Health Watch blog reblogged our post KCDC sham consultation and this was a comment received on it. For those who don’t follow this blog (and we recommend you do), here it is. We’re not sure which council this is, but that’s not important.
Being a good councilor clearly requires a fair amount of fortitude: constituents are not going to like you for bad council decisions, particularly avoidable Rates increases — even if you voted against them — and the bureaucratic elite certainly are not going to like you for challenging their notions and demanding answers.
Spot on! I was in Council (elected) for 3 years, and it’s revealing to see from the inside just how the bureaucratic machine works. “Consultation” means: sit there, listen to what we’re doing, now piss off — and often doesn’t take place at all. Cronyism and collusion, Memorandums of Understandings, and stakeholders are all part of the game, and lingo used to mislead the ratepayers. The bureaucrats most certainly run the system. They often mislead the elected reps. If the balance of voting goes against them (by some miracle) they manipulate, patronise, and persevere their way through the term, until the next election. And then they hope the new crop will be the conforming, easily fooled, naive politicians that will hold the voting balance around the table — like in most terms.
Clyde Graf