When we started our long-term plan last term and learnt we have to spend time on council’s ‘‘purpose and values’’, my instinct was probably like yours in thinking this was a waste of time and let’s skip straight to the numbers. To be honest, purpose and values sound like a nice laminated poster and not much else. But seeing the competing priorities of last term and the new ones this term, we have learnt the more we can agree with the community and each other in the front end, the better the outcome becomes at the finish line. Because the issue with jumping straight to budgets and priorities, without some shared sense of what we’re actually trying to achieve, means conversations just go in circles. Should we fund this? Cut that? Invest here? Every decision ends up being relitigated from scratch because there’s no agreed foundation underneath it. And in local government, that’s not just frustrating, it’s also expensive.…