The Māngere-Ōtāhuhu local board has already been pushing council officers to make the feedback process friendlier and less opaque, Lemauga Lydia Sosene says. Stop asking people to grapple with multi-page forms, or attend a meeting at an inconvenient time. “We ask officers to have a BBQ of some sort - something more than just a cup of tea and a biscuit - so that we can call our people to say come along, and then you can have an engaged conversation. And rather than gather your thoughts on an actual form where you’ve got 20 questions, actually a couple of post-it notes - which are quicker to record your thoughts on.” The next hurdle is to convince both council staff and councillors to treat that information - along with other non-traditional forms of feedback like Facebook comments - as seriously as they would any other type of submission, she says. “We’ve got to find ways of making it easier… I get constant complaints that Auckland Council processes are not easy to get involved in.” - shorthand.radionz.co.nz