Tauranga city Council's approach to planning its new administration building is going to change on Tuesday when the first decisions are made about the way forward.

Chairman of the new City Transformation Committee, Larry Baldock says a recent workshop provided feedback to staff on the terms of reference for the Technical Advisory Committee – which will have more local input on board.

'Other things were we are acknowledging is that we need to really maximize the involvement of partners in the whole thing,” says Larry.

'Council is not going to build each component, it's going to cost us too much there's no way we can do it that way.”

First up there will be a bit of a rethink and analysis on the state of the three other council buildings in the city precinct. It's accepted the administration building fronting Willow Street is to be demolished, but there will be another look at the library and the corner building.

'I think there's a general view among the elected members that we are going to be take a fresh look at some of it, seeing what becomes what and what is placed where,” says Larry.

'I think issues around the museum are still surfacing. The location of the museum is still far from settled. When you look at what they came up with, four buildings; the museum the library, that meant you had a pretty crowded square.

'We are going to try and sort that out as early as we can what the locations will be.”

He thinks Cliff Road is still the preferred site for a museum.

'It's crazy to go ahead with feasibility studies when you still have two sites, because then you start duplicating everything. We should get that settled.”

What will happen to the buses will also have to be discussed and decided. It was suggested they be moved up to Durham Street, but no one knows where, says Larry.

'The decision that the previous council made before was that by December there would be a report from staff that would touch on the issues. To a large extent we're going through that,” says Larry.

The workshop also involved a bit of a debrief from councillors that were part of the process up to the election and from councillors that had observed the process from the outside.

'We discussed what we saw had gone wrong and how we should do it better in future,” says Larry.