Selwyn District Mayor Lydia Gliddon has a clear message for the government as it pushes local councils to consider amalgamation: leave New Zealand’s fastest growing district alone.

Speaking after the government announced councils have just three months to come back with reform proposals, or face having a solution imposed on them, Gliddon said she was still trying to figure out exactly what problem the government was attempting to fix.

“I think the problem is efficiency in local government,” Gliddon said.

The mayor admitted the compressed timeline had caught her off guard. “That was a bit of a surprise. The three month time frame, when we’ve initially been given two years,” she said.

“There’s a lot to consider through this. We know that we’re going to have to talk about reform, and there’s probably some real challenges with that three months. But we need to do what’s right for Selwyn.”

Gliddon said her job was to represent her constituents, and the message from the community had been consistent.

“Our community has been really clear with us, through a lot of the engagement and a lot of the things that I’ve heard over my time in council, that our identity is the most important thing to them,” she said.

“My job here is actually to represent my constituents, our ratepayers and this district, and actually do what is best for this district. That is the forefront of my mind at the moment.”

Asked what the best case scenario looked like, Gliddon was blunt. “I think the best outcome is that not a lot changes for us, to be honest,” she said.

“We are the fastest growing district in the country. We’ve got a lot going on. We’ve got diverse communities, we’ve got urban population, we’ve got a national park, we’ve got rural areas and we have many, many towns.”

“We’ve built this district on a hub and spoke model, and I think severing off our hub from our spokes is not necessarily the best outcome for us.”

Gliddon stressed she was not opposed to working with neighbouring councils, but said any solution had to be shaped by the community.

“There’s probably going to have to be some unorthodox consultation that we need to undertake with our community, but we still need to do our BAU as well,” she said.

Council business as usual includes the annual plan, hearings this week, long term planning and ongoing recruitment for a new chief executive.

“What’s really important is that we don’t actually stop the planning and the forward thinking for Selwyn,” she said.

A public briefing for councillors and the community is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, and Gliddon said she would then begin formal conversations with neighbouring mayors.

“I’ve got to start undertaking those conversations with our neighbours, and having those conversations around what does our future look like together, and what actually are the best outcomes that we can have.”

She said the speed of the process was unsettling for many.

“People are surprised at the three month time frame. It’s really fast,” she said.

“If we don’t have support from our community these things don’t work well. There’s going to have to be a fair bit of work and talk with our people in our community over what they see as the best option for us going forward.”

The mayor, who is just six months into the role, said continuity of planning was vital, particularly with Rolleston on the cusp of becoming a city.

“I come into this with a plan and a vision for this district, and I will implement that, because I think it is so important that this district has continuity of planning,” she said.

“Rolleston’s going to become a city in the near future, and if we’re trying to make decisions that are going to be longlasting, that needs to be at the forefront of this decision making too.”

Gliddon did concede that the government’s complaint about duplication across local government had some merit.

“There’s lots of things that we all do, and actually do we all need to do them, or are there things that we can actually amalgamate?” she said.

She pointed to civil defence and IT systems as areas where efficiencies could potentially be found between district and regional councils.

“How can we link up IT systems? Is there continuity that we can have around our planning? There’s a lot for us to work through with our neighbours, and we’re really committed to doing that, to find those efficiencies because we know it needs to happen.”