This topic was presented at the last KCDC council meeting and its planned submission on it is here (pdf)
There is a legal requirement for elected representation to be reviewed every 6 years.
At present all 13 Wellington Regional Council seats are allocated according to the size of the constituent municipalities, and are effectively a Ward system.
In Kapiti, people get to elect one of the 13 councilors who — in theory anyway — is there to promote the interests of Kapiti people, but of course gets to vote on all the matters affecting the whole region.
The Kapiti councilor represents a population of 52,000 and is the highest per councilor in the whole region.
To the south in Porirua/Tawa, the population of 71,000 has two regional councilors: 35,600 each.
Hutt City has three regional councilors with a population base of 34,900 each.
Wellington City excluding Tawa is one councilor per 39,500 people.
Michael Scott says the Kapiti district is ‘grossly under-represented’ on the GWRC. We think it’s more a case of other areas being over-represented, and GWRC’s own paper discussing the options says having 11 councilors would be the fairest. This would see Wellington and Lower Hutt each losing a councilor.
It would also save all ratepayers the cost of two councilors.
KCDC’s CE Wayne Maxwell says Kapiti could have 60,000 people within a short time. That might support the case for a second regional councilor. He says this could be done by having 14 regional councilors, but questions whether the public at large would accept an extra local politician.
Exactly.
The Regional Council has to come up with its proposals by 7 November, with the deadline for appeals a month after this.
Even if we are under represented we’ve done better than other areas with higher representation particularly on the transport front (yes I know Otaki people may say otherwise) but overall I say KCDC regional cllrs in the past have done fantastic. I hear the main issue on voting is city vs non-city.
I personally would like to see the 2 other council places lost, the tax payer is paying enough for and we don’t need precious resources wasted on more politicians. I don’t think the Kapiti area has suffered and it should be an example to other areas that they are over represented.