MEDIA RELEASE

Better link between council spending and results

For immediate release: Tuesday 6 June 2006

Environment Bay of Plenty is changing its committee structure to strengthen the link between spending and results.

At a special meeting on Tuesday 6 June, councillors decided to disband two committees and substantially changed the roles of three others.

One of the disbanded committees is the finance and corporate services committee, which reviews the council’s financial situation throughout the year.

Chairman John Cronin says the new structure requires staff to report expenditure to the same committee they report their activities to. It is designed to create a closer relationship between “what we did, what we spent, and what we achieved from that spending”, he explains.

It will also put the focus more on results rather than actions. This will create a better link with the Ten Year Plan, which sets time-framed goals for the council’s 36 areas of activities. “We hope it will make it easier for people to find out what we are up to in our work programmes and to know whether we are meeting the goals as promised,” he says.

The new committee roles provide a clearer division between the council’s policy development and its operational work. The Strategic Policy Committee will bring more of Environment Bay of Plenty’s policy and planning work under its umbrella. The new-style Operations Committee, for example, will take on the hands-on work of navigation and safety and oil pollution management. This area of activity was previously under the Resource Management Committee.

The Regional Development Committee will be disbanded, with its work divvied up between three other committees. The new Regulation, Monitoring and Investigations committee will take over the work of the current hearings committee.

The re-structure will provide “a more efficient and effective vehicle for decision-making”, Mr Cronin says. It will reduce the number of committees overall. It also makes sure two closely linked committees, Transport and the Regional Land Transport Committee, have a single chairman and are held on the same day.

The Maori Regional Representation Committee is currently being reviewed. The form of the newly-named Iwi Committee will emerge from this review.

The new structure will be introduced in the August committee round.

ENDS

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