Jenny McKay chose Community Policy and Programs for her portfolio in the new regional Council. She freely admits she has had little time so far to focus on this part of her job, But in this interview with HT editor, Michael Berry, she explains how she intends to bring community into focus.
Does the allocation of portfolios mean you become an expert on community?
Absolutely not Michael. Whilst I come from a very strong community background, it’s my responsibility to engage with, meet with and learn from the experts in those fields.
My portfolio means working right across the community from value adding to the creative arts, right through to the building of rural futures and the economic drivers within rural communities. It’s about getting communities together – sustainable communities.
I know that’s a very catchy word at the moment, but it really means resilient communities. For example, we are working with the Montville business community to put the real, home-grown creative arts back into Montville. It’s not easy but we own a piece of land there, the Russell Family Park and we’re going back to some of the early work that was done with little housing clusters around it and then provide creative activities that would demonstrate how Montville used to operate many years ago.
Do you think hinterland communities generally want to keep separate from each other?
Yes I do. And we can learn a lot from the past. The farmers markets for example, and the strong support mechanisms of cooperatives. I see the farmers and new growers wanting to get together again to rebuild some of these activities.
Do you see different strengths in the various communities?
Now, you can say that’s a state issue, but research shows there needs to be a certain amount of growth to sustain certain services within communities. We need to look at the mix of drivers to sustain the different communities. We also need to make sure our Town Plan is flexible enough to allow the home-based business, as well as the shop front business.
It seems that the new councillors are in much more of a big picture mode, more about planning than dealing with electorate minutae. Is that an accurate assessment?
Yes. I’m very impressed with Bob in that he wants us to get out there and learn from across the world what we need to take our communities forward. We must be more connected to our communities and now that we have our PAs in place we can do that.
For example, there’s a very good international conference coming up in NZ in February that’s about community engagement and the different models available. I said to Bob recently that while it’s pertinent for me to go I would like to take two or three community champions with me so that we can develop an engagement model, not just from the elected councillors’ perspective but from the community as well. These champions can then go back to their communities and develop the model that works for them. For example, people are now asking what are you doing about the sector boards, so we need to work on that now because it all comes very much under my portfolio.
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