■ There was probably never much doubt about how the Whakatāne District Council would respond to the Ōtarawairere Track proposal. The moment the words volunteers, council land and health and safety appeared in the same sentence, the outcome seemed almost inevitable, writes Dave Hick

Risk. Liability. Compliance.

To be fair to councillors and staff, their caution is understandable. Local government today operates in an environment where every accident is scrutinised, every incident raises questions of liability, and every decision is judged with the benefit of hindsight.

No one wants to be the person who approved something that later went wrong.

Risk aversion has become institutional.

But there is another risk that receives far less attention.

The risk of doing nothing.

The Ōtarawairere Track Trust offered something many communities would envy … thousands of hours of volunteer labour to improve a public asset. They weren’t asking the council to build the track. They were offering to build it themselves.

Surely that is exactly the sort of community spirit we should be encouraging.

Instead, the proposal disappeared into the machinery of modern local government.

By the time engineers, planners, health and safety advisers, consultants, lawyers and multiple layers of management have all had their say, a relatively simple community project has become a major administrative exercise.

What staggered me most wasn’t even the recommendation.

It was the paperwork.

The agenda and supporting reports for last week’s council meeting ran to an extraordinary number of pages. Yes, most of it is digital these days rather than printed, but someone still has to write it. Someone has to review it. Someone has to read it. Someone has to respond to it.

One cannot help wondering how many hundreds of staff hours were consumed discussing a group of volunteers offering to build a walking track.

Every report has an author.

Every recommendation requires review.

Every engineering assessment needs checking.

Every legal opinion generates another opinion.

Every meeting produces minutes, follow-up actions and yet more paperwork.

None of that is free.

We often ask why council rates continue to rise well beyond inflation. Perhaps part of the answer lies here. Before a single shovel enters the ground an enormous amount of professional time has already been spent ensuring every conceivable risk has been identified, documented and mitigated.

This is becoming a pattern.

As soon as professionals become involved, every conceivable “what if?” has to be considered.

What if someone slips?

What if a retaining wall fails?

What if a tree falls?

What if ...

Before long, every possibility must be engineered out, documented, reviewed, audited and insured against.

The irony is that in trying to eliminate all risk, we often eliminate the project itself.

Yet every day we willingly accept risks far greater than those posed by a walking track.

We climb ladders to clean our gutters.

We take our children to playgrounds.

We tramp in our national parks.

And every morning thousands of New Zealanders climb into one-and-a-half tonnes of steel and drive at 100 kilometres an hour, passing complete strangers travelling at the same speed, separated by little more than a painted white line. Society functions because we accept that not every risk can be eliminated.

We manage risk.

We don’t pretend we can abolish it.

So why should volunteer projects be treated differently?

Even where council is prepared to support volunteers, the conditions can become so extensive that they verge on the impossible. In the Ōtarawairere case, staff also identified an extra $150,000 to “oversee” the project. That’s the annual rates for around 40 homes.

Perhaps it is time to reset the balance.

Instead of asking, “How do we remove every conceivable risk?”, perhaps we should ask, “How do we make this happen safely?”

Give volunteers guidance.

Provide engineering advice where it genuinely matters.

Inspect the work.

Help them succeed.

Then place a simple sign at the entrance.

This track was constructed and is maintained by community volunteers. Natural hazards exist. Please use at your own risk.

If today’s legal environment demands more, include a QR code linking to hazard information, maintenance records and all the legal disclaimers anyone could possibly want.

Most walkers will never scan it.

The lawyers will sleep better.

And the volunteers can get on with improving their community.

Because volunteers are one of New Zealand’s greatest natural resources.

They coach our sports teams.

They restore wetlands.

They plant trees.

They clean up rubbish .. “thank you Carol”.

They build walking tracks.

They raise money for local causes.

They quietly save councils and ratepayers millions of dollars every year.

But every extra form, every additional report and every new layer of compliance makes it just a little harder to say “yes” when someone offers to help.

Eventually, people stop asking.

That is the greatest risk of all.

Not that someone might twist an ankle on a walking track.

But that we discourage the very people who have quietly built and maintained so much of what makes our communities special.

If that happens, we won’t just lose another walking track.

We’ll lose the golden goose.

And replacing it with consultants, contractors and council staff will cost ratepayers far more than any volunteer ever did.