Over recent months local government reorganisation in the Wellington region has been the focus of much media attention and in particular the various positions being taken by councils.

Given that this issue has been on-going since 2010 and that the Local Government Commission is only just entering the fray, it can't be claimed that the whole process is being rushed.

But taking into consideration that community consultation and engagement have been well short of best practice, it seems to be mostly about what local government politicians want, which is not necessarily what an informed public would support.

It would be fair to say that lodgement of an application to the Local Government Commission is a critical point in the overall process and people need to be aware of its significance.

After all is said and done, we could be on the road to changes that, as a community, we could regret.

The Local Government Commission is a creature of statute. It is bound by legislation and has to play by those rules.

It has very helpfully published guidelines to help those wishing to make an application to reorganise local government.

These guidelines discuss community support in some detail. This is because, under the legislation, applicants must demonstrate community support for the application.

Demonstrated community support must be from the local authority area affected, which means that, for example, Wellington couldn't lodge an application for reorganisation involving neighbouring Porirua without demonstrating community support from the Porirua community, and Hutt City couldn't apply to merge with Upper Hutt without the support of the people of Upper Hutt. All very simple really.

So far, two applications have been filed with the Local Government Commission for the reorganisation of local government in the Wellington region. Both go into some detail to satisfy the demonstrated community support requirement.

The reality is that, cutting to the chase, consultation has been about pre-determined options with little real community support.

Based on a population of 487,700 (2011) and total submissions of 3449 from the first four consultations, if each submission is treated as a different person, it represents a response rate of less than 1 per cent, which is hardly significant and I would presume falls somewhat short of any test for demonstrated community support.

According to the Local Government Commission guidelines, there is no one method for demonstrating community support.

Applicants, as well as the Local Government Commission, are free to decide what methods to use. Clearly these would be the affected community's consultation preferences in a community where the local council has taken the time to find out what these actually are. But how many councils have actually done this?

Even though the affected communities are still largely disengaged and decisions have already been made without their input, there is a great opportunity for the Local Government Commission to use the demonstrated community support rules to effectively wind back the clock and fill the community engagement gap by working with the applicant councils to undertake a much more inclusive and engaging community review process.

So, what would such a process look like?

To begin with it needs to start with a problem or issues statement and not a list of structural options. The question for people to ponder is what sort of community do you really want, for yourself, your children and your grandchildren? What would this community look like?

Engaging with the affected communities right at the start to help define the problem ensures that people's concerns and aspirations are included resulting in a much more comprehensively defined problem statement. In this case, problem definition is about agreeing on a strategic vision for a community, a district or a region.

Having agreed on a strategic vision and now knowing where we want to go enables attention to focus on how to get there. The next question becomes what sort of organisational structure will enable us to achieve our vision? What are the costs and benefits of the array of options that in a fully inclusive community based conversation will undoubtedly emerge?

The popular theory in terms of structure seems to be that bigger is better. No one has dared to suggest that, in the light of a clearly identified strategic vision, a smaller structure could be preferable. How do we know how much alignment exists between the strategic visions of the communities that are the subject of the current applications and those that may follow?

These are all questions and processes that the Local Government Commission under its legislative umbrella can seek answers to. Its guidelines contain principles for assessing community support and these focus very much on individual people.

By following these principles the Local Government Commission could ask each affected council to produce and implement an engagement plan that achieves full and inclusive public participation at each step of the review process.

As a result, a scenario could emerge that achieves alignment between communities, strategic vision and delivery mechanisms.

Half the fun in learning new things is acquiring new language that describes them. New words, or old words recycled with new meanings, new phrases and even a whole bunch of new TLAs – three-letter acronyms. We’re currently working on an RFP for the DIA, but that’s another story entirely.

Let’s have a brief look at some of the language we use.

Engagementworks is in the community engagement business. “Community” in this sense is about collections of people bound together, either by a common place or by a common issue or cause. “Engagement” is about making meaningful connections between groups of people. Joined together, these two words describe strategies and planning programmes designed to connect organisations with affected or interested people in ways that everybody gets value and greater understanding from. A bunch of stuff underpins all of this, not least of which should be an Ears-To-Mouth Ratio of no less than two to one.

Organisations enjoy talking. So too do politicians – to such a degree that underpins what we at Engagementworks refer to as the “Announce and Defend” model of engagement. At best this is simply telling people what is going to happen to them and, that if they don’t like that, they have until a designated date to make their concerns known. In writing. It’s a process often referred to as “consultation”. Under this model there is no guarantee that anything the community says will have an effect on the outcome. This is probably why so few people take the time to make submissions.

At worst this is nothing more than minimum compliance with legislation by those in positions of power. Under this model, communities are usually only accessed, grudgingly, at the end of a process, rather than at the beginning. There are much more effective ways of gaining useful community input that won’t cost much more or take that much longer to do. Overuse of “consultation” probably explains why communities attach strong reliance on referendums or elections, tools that let them derail something that they haven’t been allowed to engage with meaningfully.

Communities are incredibly diverse. With the possible exception of hermits, everybody lives in a community. That could be a community of place, like New Zealand, or Taranaki, or Eltham, or Ladys Mile, depending on how specific the issue in question may be. It could also be a community of interest, like mountain biking, or health, or a business, or conservation, or public transport. The Internet has given power to both types of community but particularly to communities of interest, which can be global in their reach. But how many organisations use the Internet for engagement?

Organisations are great at hiring people who are good at figuring out solutions to problems. Government departments and local government councils are very adept at this. However in some cases there may not be any agreement from a community that there is actually a problem that needs fixing. Communities can get a bit grumpy when a solution comes along that causes them discomfort or inconvenience. In such cases they get even grumpier if it’s their money that is going to be used to provide the solution. Their grumpiness gets even worse if they haven’t had a chance to have a say about either the “problem” or the “solution”.

What would be better would be for organisations to become great at valuing and hiring people who are good at discussing ideas, opportunities and potential problems with the people who are most likely to be affected by those. If communities can’t agree on a problem, there’s a strong chance that there either isn’t one or that it isn’t particularly significant. That sort of feedback can save planners wasting a lot of time.

What about “stakeholders”? “Stakeholders” should be part of any community engagement process. By definition they are people or organisations who have a “stake” in an organisation. Hopefully not a Buffy The Vampire Slayer stake. How their input is weighed against input from community groups will depend on the issue. In some cases distinguishing between stakeholders and community interest groups may be a matter of semantics.

Some people believe that community engagement is just public relations in a different frock. If they do, that’s probably because their views have been formed by seeing PR in a different frock marketed as community engagement. The truth is that PR is, or should be, a sub-set of community engagement, not the other way around. Information exchange is an important part of community engagement, but only a part. Using the Ears-To-Mouth Ratio, delivering information should be less than half of effective engagement. A lot of organisations have a PR or corporate communication team. How many have a community engagement team?

So how should community engagement be monitored to see how well it works? Asking communities is a great place to start. Opinion polling isn’t expensive and can provide a scientifically valid set of results, provided the right questions are asked.

Engagementworks is founded on a belief that community engagement actually works and that by sharing knowledge and experience, people can learn to value it and what it can deliver. Many of the services we can deliver aren’t rocket science. Rather they’re about good principles and processes and valuing those and the benefits they can unlock.

An RFP is a request for proposal, and the DIA is the Department of Internal Affairs. We think we can help them with something, and we’re hopeful that they will agree with us.

Many people think that binding referendums are or should be an important cornerstone of democracy.

This belief has re-emerged as councils in the Wellington region submit their preferred options for reform to the Local Government Commission.

The Porirua City Council is the most recent to call for a binding referendum to provide a final stamp of approval from the region's voters.

A referendum has limited effectiveness. I think that far too much expectation and reliance are placed on referendums and making them binding is a step too far.

Indeed, I believe that using the referendum tool in this context is pointless.

New Zealand's recent history with referendums from issues as diverse as how Fire Service employees should be treated, to physical discipline for children and young people, to local body amalgamation between Nelson and Tasman should have provided sufficient evidence that these are an expensive waste of time.

There are far better alternatives that provide opportunities for communities to engage on an issue and have their say in a meaningful way.

To be binding, a referendum would need to be compulsory for all registered electors, with a significant majority in favour of one of its outcomes, before that referendum could be treated with any real respect.

Turnouts in referendums are often small, in many cases less than 30 per cent of registered electors. Disempowering or ignoring non-participants could be a brave political move, if these were a majority of the voter population and any outcome was to be mandatory.

Then there's the construction of the referendum's question itself. It needs to reduce what could be a complex situation down into a black-versus-white choice.

Such a reduction is dangerous, particularly for voters who may be unfamiliar with the detail of the proposal and how they may be affected by any outcome.

Then there's the issue of the importance of the issue that the referendum may be about. An importance threshold needs to be set at a high level, otherwise electors could be endlessly deluged with referendums about all manner of issues that may have no relevance for them. If that was the case, the already low rates of participation would fall further.

So what are the alternatives?

Good engagement processes should be established with communities long before a single outcome is promoted.

Effective participation should give communities a lot of say in defining opportunities or problems, listing and evaluating options and ranking their priorities. If such a process happens, then any outcome that could be delivered from a referendum would be unnecessary.

The toolbox for community engagement contains lots of options. Choosing the right tool or tools comes down to the level of engagement that is desired, target communities to be reached and the resources available to make something happen, particularly time and money.

Decision-making is something that many New Zealanders expect elected representatives to do for them, but they also expect good engagement processes that involve them before any decision point.

Good community engagement processes should give elected representatives confidence to make decisions that they know will sit comfortably with most people.

Done well, good engagement processes can depoliticise an issue.

Good engagement before a decision is made can greatly reduce the controversy that often happens afterwards, particularly legal challenges. While even the best run engagement process won't please everybody, it will build a strong sense of commitment to and ownership of the outcomes from most of the participants.

On the other hand, New Zealand's recent history tells us that a referendum comes at a considerable cost and usually produces an outcome that is ignored by voters, by elected representatives or both. On that basis, it is a tool best forgotten.