Many New Zealanders will have the opportunity to vote for community or local board members as part of the 2022 local elections. Here’s how it all works.

What are these boards and why do we have them?

Community and local boards are part of New Zealand’s local government infrastructure. They’re entities where elected members (and appointed members, but we’ll get to that) represent and advocate for their communities at a more local level than city or regional councils can do. Ideally, boards are made up of people who are closely involved with the communities they represent, and can be responsive to local needs and more straightforward to approach than the sometimes byzantine structures or higher-level preoccupations of councils. 

Boards make decisions solely on behalf of their communities, according to whatever budgets and areas their overarching council has given them. In return, boards can share feedback they’ve received from the public to the council that sits above them. There are 110 community boards around the country and 21 local boards in Auckland.

Why are Auckland’s boards different?

Because of Auckland’s super city structure, which means that the city council and regional council aren’t separate, the equivalent to a community board in Auckland is the local board, because it falls under a different piece of legislation. Unlike elsewhere, local boards in Auckland can raise targeted rates and theoretically sit beside Auckland Council’s governing body with a higher degree of authority over their designated areas.

Are local boards the same as wards? 

No. Wards are the way councils are organised, with the councillors who make decisions for the city or district as a whole being elected to represent particular areas. Multiple local board areas can be within a ward; for example, in Auckland the North Shore Ward contains the Devonport-Takapuna Local Board and the Kaipātiki Local Board.

Does everyone have a board? 

No. Community boards were formed in the local government reforms in 1989, which reduced the overall number of councils. In some areas, like Canterbury and Southland, every resident is in a community board area; in others, like Wellington, only Tawa and Mākara/Ōhāriu have community boards. The boundaries and composition of boards are required to be reevaluated every six years by the Local Government Act 2001, to make sure that boards are able to represent the interests of everyone in those communities. Because of the decentralised nature of local government in New Zealand there are inconsistencies like this throughout the system. 

You can check if you have a local board, and learn about your candidates and their policies, by entering your address here. 

What do boards do?

Again, this can vary wildly from place to place, as the remit of a board depends on what responsibilities the council has given it. Most boards have a budget given to them by the council (community boards don’t collect rates directly, although Auckland’s local boards can raise targeted rates for specific projects), and can use this budget for funding community initiatives that apply to them. Some boards run parks, reserves, libraries or community centres. Some boards, including Auckland’s local boards, can recommend bylaws (such as alcohol bans) to be implemented in their area. 

How do board elections work? 

We elect our local/community board members as part of the October 2022 local elections. If you live in a board area, the voting pack you get in the post will include information about board candidates. All boards have at least four elected members, and up to 12 members total. For details of what local board you’re in and who is running, check out the Spinoff’s partner project Policy.nz.  

Board members get paid. You can find more details about remuneration for local boards here, and for community boards here. 

Wait… so not everyone on a community board is elected? Who are the appointed members? 

As well as members elected directly to the board, a community board can have appointed members, who must be councillors from the overarching councils they fall under. The number of appointed members on a board has to be less than half as many as elected members (in order to prevent councillors on boards voting the boards out of existence). When there are multiple councillors living in a board area, the council decides which of these are appointed to the board. The idea behind this is to help the council and local board work closely together.

Because boards are “unincorporated” bodies governed by statute (a technical legal term which means that the role of a board isn’t clearly defined in any piece of legislation and instead is impacted by what their council has set for them) and their responsibilities around the country, there is a great deal of flexibility for a newly elected/appointed board to decide how they will arrange themselves and whether they’ll have standing orders for their meetings. Boards select their own chair and deputy chair; appointed members can be chairs, but this creates difficulties (i.e. when the board does a submission to the council, is the appointed member acting as a councillor or a board member?). This is laid out in more detail in local government pageturner The Good Governance Guide for Community Boards. 

Auckland’s local boards have no appointed members, but if another unitary council were to be established (Wellington or Christchurch super city, anyone?) the terms for their local boards could include appointed members.

Enough with the technical details – how do local/community board decisions affect me? 

Events run in your community – an annual fair? A flea market? A poetry evening? – might get funding from the board. So can groups, like a kids’ Lego club or a tree planting initiative. If you have an idea for something you’d like to make happen to make your community a better place to live and need some cash for it, you can apply to the board. If you have feedback about broader things, such as safety concerns in a park, a new waterslide to make the pool more fun, or concerns about flooding in your area, you can share those with the local board, too. They’ll listen to you, and may be able to respond if it falls within their budget and responsibilities. They’ll also be able to offer that feedback to your council, too.

This article was updated at 5:00 pm on 2 September to clarify the responsibilities of local boards in Auckland

A petition from Renters United calls for the removal of the ratepayer roll, which allows people to vote in local elections at home – and wherever they own property. 

Advocacy group Renters United has today launched a petition calling for an amendment to the Local Government Act 2001 to end the “ratepayer franchise”. The ratepayer roll is an alternative electoral roll that allows ratepayers who own property in local government jurisdictions where they aren’t residents to vote both in an area where they reside and in other council or community/local board areas where they own property.

“The Ratepayer Elector Roll is inherently undemocratic, violating the principle of one person one vote to such an extent that in 2016 one man was eligible to vote in seven different elections,” reads the petition. 

“We did away with property-based voting in national elections in 1881, and now it’s time for local government elections to catch up,” said Éimhín O’Shea, a spokesperson for Renters United.

The Renters United petition may be welcomed by some members of parliament; in a One News segment last month, several MPs expressed ignorance of the ratepayer electoral roll, while others said they would be interested in examining the law further. 

The number of ratepayer electors is small, with many people who would be eligible not registering for their extra votes. In the 2019 local elections there were 1,311 and 1,076 registered ratepayer electors in Kāpiti and Coromandel respectively, the two districts with the highest number of non-resident ratepayer voters. 

However, O’Shea points out that low turnout in local elections means that these small numbers can have a big impact. In the 2019 election, for example, Wellington’s Andy Foster was voted in as mayor with a tiny margin of 62 votes under the STV system. 219 ratepayer electors were registered in that election; their involvement may have decided the vote. 

To Renters United, this system is unfair. “The message it sends to voters is that if you’re wealthy, your vote matters more,” said O’Shea. “The ratepayer roll will incentivise candidates for local government to unfairly prioritise property owners over those with low income and renters.”

‘Skin in the game’

Gary Gotlieb, an elected member for Coromandel-Thames District Council defended the status quo. He told The Spinoff that non-resident ratepayers deserve to choose who gathers their rates and how they are spent. “If you pay rates you have skin in the game and you’re entitled to a say in who governs you,” said Gotlieb, an Auckland resident who has owned property in the Coromandel for decades. He has a vested interest, he said, as a member of the community. He has been encouraging people he knows to register with the ratepayers roll to make their voice heard.

Reuben van Dorfen, a real estate agent based in Whangamata also running for Thames-Coromandel District Council, agreed. It makes sense, he said, that ratepayers should have a voice, although he has sympathy for the “one person gets one vote” concept. “Ratepayers are contributing to the community – the thing with Coromandel is that people who own beach houses sustain the economy and way of life here.” 

Other elected members, however, disagree that the ratepayer roll is necessary. “In reflecting on who local government exists to serve and what it exists to service, I don’t think this separate roll has a place,” said Sophie Handford, a Kāpiti District Councillor running again in the 2022 elections. “Equal voting rights are the key foundation to a healthy democracy.”

Renters United’s O’Shea said they are launching their petition to remove what they see as an archaic inequity from Aotearoa’s electoral law. “Absent ratepayers don’t need their rubbish picked up, they don’t need green spaces, they don’t need public transport options. There’s a disconnect between that and the ratepayer roll existing.” 

In response to concerns like these, Gotlieb said that in places like Coromandel where non-resident ratepayers like himself are a majority, the roll makes sure the contribution of ratepayers can shape the council. As it is, he said, the fact that council positions are determined by permanent population means non-resident ratepayers aren’t equally represented. The south east ward where Gotlieb is running, which includes the beach town of Whangamatā, pays 39.5% of the total rates for the district, but only has two councillors as most of the population isn’t permanent; the town of Thames, where 73% of the ratepayers are permanent, pays 19.4% of total rates and gets three councillors. 

Gotlieb sees his role on council as an opportunity to give non-resident ratepayers, as a part of the community and economy, the space to have their say. It comes at a cost to him personally, he said.  “It’s a bloody pain with the travel [from Auckland to Coromandel]; I might travel for four hours to get to a meeting that is just an hour and a half.” Often, his wife drives him so he can rest. “If others are jealous of [of ratepayers getting two votes] then I’m sorry, that’s life!” 

O’Shea emphasises that for ratepayers seeking to be involved in the communities where they own properties, there are many options to make their voice heard in local government beyond voting. “Landlords and absentee ratepayers can advocate for themselves through making submissions to council and LGOIMAs [official information requests],” he said. 

“No-one is telling you you have to have a holiday home – there are costs associated with that,” he said, noting that businesses and individuals who own multiple properties don’t expect to get extra electorate votes in national elections. 

Renters already face barriers in local elections, with postal voting making it more difficult for those who move frequently to be registered with the right address. “When we have turnout as low as we do in local elections, we need to examine every barrier to voting and do everything we can to mitigate it,” said O’Shea. 

“Local elections are a chance for everyone in New Zealand to have a say in what they want their community to look like,” said O’Shea. He encouraged interested parties to sign the Renters United petition. “Local bodies exist to provide services to their residents, not their ratepayers.”

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