Applications for Provincial Growth Fund monies have resulted in Ōpōtiki holding an increased number of closed meetings in the past three years.
Photo: Unsplash / Craig Whitehead
In the last triennium, the public was either fully excluded or excluded in part from attending 84 percent of Ōpōtiki District Council's meetings.
In comparison, 53 percent of Whakatāne District Council meetings and 32 percent of Kawerau District Council meetings were partly or wholly closed to the public.
Ōpōtiki's council chief executive Aileen Lawrie said it was fair to say there were more in-committee (public excluded) items in this triennium than there had been previously.
"There are several reasons for this," she said.
"There have been a few more commercial papers as we have a lot of investment property transactions and rating matters where individuals are mentioned at the moment. But the main driver of our in-committee papers has been the PGF funding and businesses cases for the harbour.
"That process has meant that we needed more confidential discussion over the last few years due to the commercially-sensitive nature of the information for our partner organisations, the commercially sensitive tender process for the build and the terms of the PGF itself."
The Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 contains a list of the circumstances where councils may exclude members of the public from their meetings or parts of them.
These include
Ms Lawrie said most of Ōpōtiki's in-committee meetings were just "one or two" papers that needed to stay confidential until resolutions were made, which could then be made public.
"The numbers are also possibly quite skewed as one confidential paper could need several in-confidence discussions to report progress and then ratify minutes," she said.
"Some things may never come out of confidential, like HR reporting with staff details and so on. Other things, if discussed in open meetings, could lead to bad outcomes for ratepayers. But once complete, the purchase is generally considered public information."
Kawerau District Council manager finance and corporate services Peter Christophers said only one of the council's 26 public-excluded meetings in the last triennium was wholly confidential.
"The meetings will generally have most of the agenda that is open to the public and then a final bit where the public are asked to leave," Mr Christophers said.
"There was one exception recently where council had to have an extraordinary meeting to review the chief executive's performance up to 30 June, 2019. This was the only item on the agenda so consequently there was no part of the meeting that the public could attend."
Whakatāne District Council's public excluded meetings included performance reviews, PGF funding and discussions around the Awatarariki managed retreat process.
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