[The Path to City Council] I listened to the story of former Shijonawate Mayor Shuhei Higashi

My name is Mikiya, and I post under the theme of "Aiming for both the promotion of welfare and the reduction of staff burden." I am a local government employee living in the Kansai region, and I aim to become a local city council member in the unified local elections in April 2027 to bring back local industry.

On May 17th, the six-session lecture series of the Constitutional Academy Osaka concluded.

The lecturer for the 6th session was announced during the 5th session, and it was someone I had recently learned about and really wanted to meet. That person is Shuhei Higashi, the former mayor of Shijonawate. He was elected at the age of 28, the youngest in history. I recently wrote about how his Voicy channel was incredibly interesting.

This time, I will report on his lecture.

Shuhei Higashi's talk

Mr. Higashi's talk this time covered three main points.
Introducing them in order,

• The job of a local government leader is to secure financial resources

• True public-private partnership in collaboration with companies

• Work-style reform and dialogue with residents

I will introduce them in order.

The job of a local government leader is to secure financial resources

Shijonawate City, where Mr. Higashi served as mayor, is located in the east of Osaka Prefecture, adjacent to Nara Prefecture. Nearby are cities with distinct characteristics such as Hirakata City (Hirakata Park), Kadoma City (Panasonic), and Higashiosaka City (a city of factories).

This city has long suffered from population decline, especially social decline, and it seems the situation was such that even the locals recognized that "the city hasn't had much energy lately." Mr. Higashi himself said it was a city where some people didn't even know how to read "Shijonawate." That is how little presence the city had.

The decline in population, especially among child-rearing households, seemed serious, and it was trapped in a negative spiral: tax revenue loss due to the decrease in child-rearing households, reduction of measures due to tax revenue loss, decline in the city's appeal due to the reduction of measures, and further population decline.

While the city was in this situation, the national government enacted the Omnibus Law on Decentralization. As a result, authority was transferred to the city, but the financial resources to match that were not 100% guaranteed. This was the "Trinity Reform" under the Koizumi administration.

The financial situation was already difficult. On top of that, there was the transfer of authority with scarce financial resources. How to overcome this?

Regarding this, Mr. Higashi reviewed all of the city's projects, about 1,700 in total, and decided to discontinue some of them. However, he did so only after carefully explaining it to the residents.

This effort paid off, and the city broke away from an accounting practice of dipping into the fiscal adjustment fund (the city's savings) every year for the first time in 31 years. It achieved such a remarkable recovery that even the staff in the finance department said, "I never thought the day would come when our finances would be like this."

Whether it comes from his personality of examining things in detail, or from his background as a consultant, it was a recovery based on a precise strategy.

True public-private partnership in collaboration with companies

Next, he spoke about public-private partnerships.

When you hear "collaboration with the private sector," I think many people imagine outsourced work. This is where the city sets a budget, pays an outsourcing fee, and a private company accepts the order and carries it out. However, he said that this cannot be called true collaboration.

As an example of the initiatives during Mr. Higashi's tenure, there was a program where baby clothes were presented during home visits by welfare commissioners and child welfare commissioners when a newborn was born. He mentioned that this was done in collaboration with a nearby Aeon, effectively utilizing items that were scheduled to be discarded.

Recently, due to the spread of video doorbells, it seems that there are many cases where people do not open the door even when a welfare commissioner visits. However, he explained that by pairing the visit with a gift, it became possible to create an opportunity for contact, and residents became aware of who to consult when they have any problems.

In addition, he said they collaborated with Kansai Electric Power to install monitoring equipment on utility poles and had children carry terminals that notify their location via Bluetooth, which was developed as a regional monitoring project.

In any case, both sides contribute their wisdom to tackle regional issues. I was taught that this is true public-private partnership. By the way, he mentioned that most of these ideas come from staff proposals.

Work-style reform and dialogue with residents

Mr. Higashi said he started working on work-style reform right away. This is because he wanted the staff to work with a positive attitude. The needs of residents are becoming complex and diversified, and the role of the administration must also become complex and diversified. To that end, we must reduce the time unnecessarily taken up by simple tasks.

I also sometimes receive very simple inquiry calls while working. For example, I sometimes receive simple inquiries over the phone such as "When is the child allowance payment date?", and every time that happens, my work is interrupted. It seems that the city receives 150,000 calls a year, including these types of inquiries.

Mr. Higashi said that he turned these inquiries from citizens into big data and analyzed them to improve response capabilities. Then, he created surplus capacity and allocated that capacity to time for direct interaction between people. In other words, time for dialogue is created.

One of the things that emerged from the dialogue with residents was the implementation of autonomous driving technology. He said that they spent several years advancing the dialogue with residents, and the residents even went to inspect advanced cases together, and they solidified things like what kind of vehicles to use based on the residents' understanding.

Conclusion

Like this, he spoke for about an hour, but it ended in the blink of an eye.

After the lecture, it was time for questions, and there were so many questions that it felt like every single attendee asked one. I plan to summarize this at a later date.

Thank you for reading until the end.