There's no job description for being a district councillor, according to Whakatāne District Council's people and engagement general manager Emlyn Hatch.

Emlyn did, however, reveal a list of qualities required to do the job successfully at the first of two information hui for prospective candidates, held on Tuesday night.

Eleven people attended the meeting to pick the brains of staff as to what the day-to-day life of a Whakatāne district mayor, councillor or community board member really looks like.

This year's local body elections have featured a Be a Game Changer campaign to try to attract a more diverse range of candidates to these roles and three Māori ward seats have been created to provide a stronger voice for Māori to the council table.

'[District council] is a really unusual beast to govern,” says Emlyn.

The gathering included two current district councillors and two community board members.

"There's lots of different rules, lots of different activities, and on any given day you could be talking about 10 things which are all very different in the way they are operated, planned and funded,” says Emlyn.

'If you sat on a school board previously, that's complicated enough, but the council has got around 25 different businesses within it.

Each one of those businesses is funded differently. Some are entirely funded by user fees, some of them have no user fees, some are funded by people like New Zealand Transport Agency (Waka Kotahi) and they require a 30-year plan to give us funding.

Some people give us money without any plan.”

Among the attributes needed was commitment.

"There's a lot of work outside normal working hours, on evenings and weekends. You need to be good at time management. You do get pulled in a lot of different directions at different times of the day and times of the year. You must be flexible, be able to prioritise and manage your time effectively,” says Emlyn.

Councillors need to be able to read a lot of information that is often technical.

'There's a lot of reading; agendas, minutes, plans, policies, bylaws, submissions, advice, recommendations – there is a lot. If you don't like reading it might not be the role for you,” Mr Hatch said.

'We encourage you to have a good working knowledge of Te Tiriti. A lot of our work will involve talking about the Treaty on any given day.

'You've got to be a good communicator. You are going to be in the public eye a lot as part of your role. Particularly, when we start live streaming our meetings. You may be called upon to do some public speaking. We want people who want to communicate. That's really helpful for us as an organisation and equally as important for your communities.”

Emlyn says you also needed to have a good grasp of technology and using multiple devices and channels for communication.

'I don't know how many times we've heard the phrase, ‘you're on mute', over the past year.”

The ability to make strategic decisions that would affect the whole community was among the most important qualities needed in an elected official.

'If you are well versed in taking information from a range of sources, listening to a lot of people and then connecting that with what we want to achieve as a team, that's really useful. The worst thing you can do sometimes is not make a decision. They are necessary in order to go forward," says Emlyn.

'If you're interested in local council for parks and playgrounds and footpaths, that's all good, but I would like to stress that you will have some significant business decisions to make in the interests of the communities that you serve over the next three years.”

The one attribute he considered most important of all was the ability to build relationships.

'In this council, you've got 11 elected officials. In order to move forward you need to build a team. You need six people, at least, to be in the same space at the same time in order to move forward. To do that, you've got to be really good at building relationships with people, in the council chamber and in the wider community as well.

Emlyn went over a typical day of a councillor.

'Reading and preparation for the next meeting, calls from people in the community, speaking to residents as part of consultation about a new bylaw and there's always events to attend.”

With five standing committees, 11 joint committees and multiple sub-committees, depending on your level of commitment, in any given month there could be about six or seven formal meetings to attend, along with workshops and information sessions. Most of that takes place during the day.

Councillor Lesley Immink, who attended the meeting, added that while there was a perception that being a councillor was a part-time job, it was important not to underestimate the time commitment necessary for the role.

Asked whether she thought you could have a job at the same time as being a councillor, Lesley says 'if you were self-employed, perhaps, but with this last 12 months, with these reforms, the level of increased meetings and workshops just to keep appraised of those has made it very difficult.”

She says councillors also needed to be 'quite resilient” with some of the feedback that was received from some members of the community.

'You are crossing over a lot of sensitive areas with people and need to be able to respond to them without taking it all on board, personally.”

Emlyn says currently local councils had five big items around reform.

'If you've been a councillor in the past, you may have served maybe four terms in council previously and dealt with one of these things. Currently we've got five significant [reforms] on the go at the same time. If you get elected in October, the council you lead in three years' time could possibly look radically different to the one you get elected to in October.

'Another complexity is that, if we see a change in Government, four out of those five might stop. If we get the same government, we might see an acceleration of all five.”

He encouraged anyone who is considering standing for a council or community board to pick up copies of the council's pre-election report, which contains information for voters and potential candidates and the Candidate Information Handbook.”

Candidate nominations opened on July 15 and will close on August 12 at 12 noon.

Whakatane District Council electoral officer Cindy Butt recommends people not leave this until the last minute as the closing time is strict and all paperwork must be in place by then.

She says once a nomination paper was lodged, it became public information and candidates would be listed on the Whakatāne District Council website as they came in.

An official list of candidate names along with a short statement and photograph of the candidate will be available from August 17.

Although no nominations are currently listed on the website, the Local Democracy Reporting has spoken to several people who have indicated they are standing.

Mayoral candidates for the Whakatāne district we know of are our current mayor, Judy Turner, councillors Lesley Immink, John Pullar and Nandor Tanczos.

Deputy mayor Andrew Iles has indicated that he intends to stand as a council candidate again in the Te Urewera general ward, Gavin Dennis will stand again in the Rangitaiki general ward, and former Waipa councillor Vern Wilson has said he is standing for the Whakatāne-Ōhope general ward. Three candidates have indicated that they will be standing in each of the three new Māori Wards. Toni Boynton for Kapu te Rangi, Jackie Te Amo-Te Kurapa for Toi ki Uta and Rihi Vercoe for Rangitaiki Māori.

In Kawerau, Carolyn Ion is the first to have lodged her nomination to stand for council. Mayor Malcolm Campbell has announce that he will not be standing again, and has publicly endorsed deputy mayor Faylene Tunui as Kawerau's next mayor. Mrs Tunui has not responded to questions from Local Democracy Reporting on whether she plans to stand for the position. Councillor Berice Julian has said she plans to stand for another term as councillor, while councillor David Sparks will not be standing as he has moved out of the district. None of the remaining four councillors have responded to questions about whether they will stand again.

In Ōpōtiki, Mayor Lyn Riesterer will stand for the mayoralty again, opposed by councillors David Moore and Louis Rapihana. Councillors Barry Howe and Shona Browne, Steve Nelson and Debi Hocart have said they will stand as councillors again, along with newcomer Tom Brooks.

-Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air