The role of councillors on community boards – where they find themselves limited in how they contribute – will be reviewed in Waipā.
Councillors have to choose between debating issues at community board or council level for fear of being censured by staff who warn them to declare a conflict of interest and be silent.
Community board chairs Jo Davies-Colley (Cambridge), left, and Ange Holt (Te Awamutu & Kihikihi), right before this week’s meeting about their performances. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
Te Awamutu-Kihikihi Community Board chair Ange Holt called out the practice at last week’s council Strategic Planning and Policy meeting, saying it often rendered councillors Lou Brown and Bruce Thomas ineffective.
Bruce Thomas
Lou Brown
“What we are experiencing that both our councillors do not take part at the community board table regarding anything that is going to a council meeting. They then do not speak on our behalf at the council table, otherwise they cannot vote,” Holt said.
Councillors Brown and Thomas sit on the community board in Te Awamutu – while Mike Montgomerie and Philip Coles are members of the Cambridge board.
Holt called for a meeting with mayor Susan O’Regan, chief executive Steph O’Sullivan and council committee chairs to discuss the issue and come up with a way forward.
Montgomerie said he was looking forward to the meeting happening “and getting a result”.
“This whole conflict of interest things— I agree, the system from the outside seems… not right”.
Mike Montgomerie
Philip Coles
He questioned the “slight hybrid” model with councillors on boards, a point Susan O’Regan echoed saying, as a councillor who previously sat on board, it was a “very odd place to sit”.
Holt said she understood the “why” behind the conflict of interest and how it worked – “but if we practice it to the letter of the law, there are times in a small community when it is like having a noose around your neck”.
