Council tension spills over as museum costs surface again

“If you don’t want to contribute at the times we have [the meetings], it is a bit rich to come back at this late stage in election year and do politics."

Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark and Cr Ian Pottinger.

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The simmering tension between Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark and long-term councillor Ian Pottinger is now at full-on boiling point - if it wasn’t already.

The latest instalment in the ongoing stoush came via a fiery to-and-fro at an Invercargill City Council meeting on Tuesday.

It led to multiple interjections and suggestions that Mayor Clark was getting personal with comments he made about Pottinger’s absence from previous meetings.

Meeting chair Grant Dermody had one of the more challenging tasks in Invercargill on Tuesday, controlling what at times became a touch chaotic.

At the meeting, Pottinger raised questions about costs attached to the new $87m museum development, titled Project 1225.

He went as far as saying the project was “arse about face” before rephrasing it as “back-to-front” when Dermody cautioned him about his language.

Mayor Clark’s frustration at Pottinger’s continual verbal cracks at the museum project was made clear at Tuesday’s meeting.

Pottinger raised several questions, including wanting to know why $249,000 had been spent on legal services for the museum project? And he asked for clarification on $337,000 spent on museum operational advice.

He also wanted answers around why the design of the museum experience was done first, before the building was designed to fit the experience that will go inside it.

That prompted him to suggest the project was “arse about face”.

Mayor Clark said there had been many council meetings on the museum project in the past, and Pottinger was absent for a lot of them.

Clark questioned why he was raising these matters now, suggesting it was because it was close to an election.

“I have to say it comes at a reasonable level of frustration that I sit here and hear these questions today,” Clark said.

“The councillor has had, by my assessment in the last six or seven months, at least four meetings where we’ve discussed the ongoing increases, and we've gone out to public consultation on that.

“At three of those four meetings, [Pottinger] has been an apology.”

Clark was frustrated that with the build getting closer to finished, and at a time when they were now firming up the museum experience, Pottinger was revisiting the issues.

“There has been an opportunity for the councillor to be involved all the way through, and he has been an apology.”

Clark then rattled off various meetings that Pottinger had not attended where the museum topic was discussed, before Pottinger then interjected.

“Point of Order, I was in the United States of America, and my apology was noted for that very reason.

“This is getting personal from the Mayor,” Pottinger said.

Mayor Clark then doubled down, saying: “My final comment to that chair, the councillor was not in America from the 6th of August to the 29th of October. We’ve had meetings all the way through there.

“If you don’t want to contribute at the times we have [the meetings], it is a bit rich to come back at this late stage in election year and do politics,” Clark said.

The council eventually agreed to ask council staff to bring a report back to the next infrastructure and policy meeting to address the various questions Pottinger has raised regarding Project 1225.

The background…

In the lead up to the 2022 election Pottinger pulled out of the mayoral race and instead opted to endorse Clark for the job.

At the start of the current term Mayor Clark then appointed Cr Pottinger as the council’s infrastructure committee chairperson.

All seemed to be rosy between the two, but things have changed dramatically over the past two to three years.

Pottinger first mysteriously ended up on leave from his committee chair role, with Clark saying Pottinger had requested some time out from that role.

However, Pottinger refuted that, saying Clark had told him to take a break from the committee chair role.

Clark then decided to axe Pottinger as the committee chair altogether following the Mayor’s mid-term review of the council.

Pottinger was replaced by Grant Dermody as the committee chair for the newly named infrastructure and projects committee.

That resulted in a council pay cut for Pottinger, and the pair’s working relationship has been almost non-existent since.

It’s understood that the pair have regularly been involved in email spats.

Pottinger - along with Cr Ria Bond - lodged a Code of Conduct complaint against Mayor Clark following an episode on NZ Today which Clark featured in.

In June last year, Pottinger called for Clark to resign after a Code of Conduct complaint was lodged by council CEO Michael Day on behalf of the United Fire Brigades Association.

Just last month Pottinger said Mayor Clark “doesn’t know how council financially works” on the back of Clark’s push to limit the 2025-26 rate increase to 3.9%.