Selwyn Mayor Lydia Gliddon is urging residents to take part in a survey that will help decide the future shape of local government in the district, saying any decision must be driven by the community.

The council is consulting on three options: Selwyn remaining on its own as a unitary authority, a merger with Ashburton, or a wider merger with Christchurch, Waimakariri and Hurunui.

“We’re talking to everyone at this stage, all of our neighbours,” Gliddon said. “But the most important people we’re talking to is actually our community.”

She said the council would respect whatever residents decided, even if they wanted to keep the status quo. “We are a council that listens to our people, and it is so important that we back our people,” she said.

Gliddon said Selwyn’s rapid growth had to be factored into any proposal. The district is the fastest growing in New Zealand, and she said Rolleston could reach city status within the next 10 years.

“It’s not just that, but it’s also the rest of our district as well. It’s our GDP, it’s our agricultural area. Everything connects in here,” she said. One of the council’s bottom lines, she said, was that Selwyn stay whole rather than have its communities severed from one another.

Gliddon said fast-track development was proving a challenge, and she had written to the minister asking for all fast-track applications across the district to be assessed together rather than in isolation.

“When you look at them in isolation, they might not seem so bad, but when you look at it as a whole across the district, actually the phasing for infrastructure is a little unrealistic for us,” she said. She noted the applications sat on top of the council’s 30-year growth strategy.

The mayor also wants to close what she describes as a loophole in the rating system that allows newly completed homes to use council services for months while still being rated as bare land. “Our community told us really strongly that they want growth to pay for growth,” Gliddon said. “It’s not about people paying more, it’s just about paying the fair share that should be allocated.”

She said a home issued a code of compliance in August might not pay a full year of rates until the following July, and closing the gap could deliver between $3 million and $6 million in revenue, easing costs for the general ratepayer.

Gliddon acknowledged some developers might argue the change would add to the cost of building and buying a home, and said more work was needed before any decision was made.

Asked about Selwyn councillor Elizabeth Mundt announcing at the weekend that she would stand for New Zealand First, Gliddon said elected members were entitled to do as they pleased. “It’s a really hard one, and elected members are entitled to do as they please. We don’t have any control over that,” she said. The challenge now, she said, was managing any conflict of interest and keeping party politics away from the council table.

Gliddon said Mundt told her about the decision around midday on Saturday, which left little time to consider the situation, but she said the council would work with what it had.

She encouraged residents to make a submission on the district’s future, describing it as a couple of minutes well spent.