The local council elections are once again round the corner, to be held on 11 March.

It has been 12 years since their inception and a lot of good has been done in that time, with regional government being allowed to flourish in autonomy from the central administration. We have seen councils manage and mismanage their budgets over the years and we have also seen some perform brilliantly and others not so well. But it must be said that the local councils are a success story.

The fundamental point behind local government is that the people who live in an area have much better hands-on knowledge than the central government. They know exactly what is needed in their town, city or village and the best way to go about it.

Of course, nothing is perfect and some local councils do better than others, but what is certain is that they are there to serve the community and they do, for the most part, try to carry out that function.

At the beginning of council life, they were very much polarised politically, especially when they had seats from both sides on board. Over the years, this has been reduced, but we have still seen, in recent years, whole legislations passing with particular councils bickering from beginning to end.

When such a situation arises, councils do not get as much work done as they could because of counter-voting and spokes in wheels. It should, in theory, be simple. People from one area working together and picking each other’s brains to see an improvement in the life of their village or town.

Inevitably, when national politics enters one of its usual disputes, this can spill over into local government. And to be honest, it shouldn’t. While one understands that local councils are a platform for aspiring politicians, their work on the councils should not be political, and much less partisan!

The temptation would be to say that such goings-on are widespread, but they are not because although murmurings are often heard from within council walls, most do actually get on with the job.

But there have been various councils where progress has been at a standstill: Gzira and Santa Venera to name a couple. Simply because there is a political clash of one sort or another, the very spirit of what constitutes a local council disintegrates and degenerates into mud and handbag-slinging.

Another area where councils can improve is that of inter-council cooperation. Environment Minister George Pullicino recently said that, in some respects, Malta is a Republic of Local Councils, and he is not too far off the mark. Councils can cooperate much more in the implementation of overlapping projects. IT instruction is one that springs to mind, closely neighbouring councils could pool their resources to offer a better instruction service to those who make use of it. Another area is embellishment and environment-related projects, where better pooling of resources could ensure a superior end product.

One final aspect that springs to mind is tapping European Union funding. Mosta local council recently managed to secure two amounts of funding from the EU in order to implement two projects with Sicilian local councils.

This, of course, is good, but would it not be much easier for different local councils to apply for joint-project funding? Local councils have done a lot of good for Malta, especially our political climate, yet the one danger is of them falling into apathy. Councils must, like everything else, move with the times and realise that consensus and cooperation is in the best interests of both them and their residents.