Councillor 'horrified' by meeting; concerns raised over chairmanship

“I was away in Brisbane and Sydney, and when I came home and watched the live stream, I was horrified."

Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark believes concerns raised over the way mayors are being chaired is electioneering.

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An Invercargill City Councillor says she is “horrified” at how a May council meeting played out and has raised concerns about how meetings are being chaired.

And it appears at least one other councillor agrees with that view.

Although Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark, who chairs the full council meetings, believed the concerns raised by his colleagues were simply a case of electioneering.

Mayor Clark also pointed out that chairing council meetings was not as simple as some might think.

Cr Ria Bond has told The Tribune she felt “egos” have at times taken over at meetings, and they were taking much longer than needed to get through.

Bond pointed to a three-hour May 27 council meeting, chaired by Mayor Clark, which she was unable to attend.

“I was away in Brisbane and Sydney, and when I came home and watched the live stream, I was horrified.

“The time [it took], the back-and-forth toing and froing between councillors and the Mayor, and councillors themselves,” Bond said.

“I rang and said to another councillor, ‘What the heck happened at that meeting?’. I sat there and watched from the outside and thought, no wonder people feel the way they do about council.”

Five-term councillor Cr Ian Pottinger confirmed he too has issues with the way meetings are being chaired.

“It is not up to the standard that I’ve been used to. For some reason, the chair people want to talk too much.

“They are supposed to be the conductor and facilitate constructive discussion… You’ll have a member of the council say something, and then [the chair] will have their 10 cents worth.

“The chairmanship is not as good as it used to be.”

On top of Mayor Clark’s role, Grant Dermody chairs the infrastructure and projects committee, Lesley Soper chairs the finance and policy committee, while Darren Ludlow heads up the community wellbeing committee.

Deputy Mayor Tom Campbell has stepped in in the absence of others at times.

Pottinger declined to name which committees he has concerns about.

Earlier in the term, Pottinger was the infrastructure committee chair before Mayor Clark decided to have him replaced.

“My overall statement to this is that both the people making these comments are electioneering. It is coming up to an election,” Mayor Clark said.

“It’s very easy to sit on the sideline and criticise.”

Although Clark did acknowledge that meetings have been taking longer than they may have previously. He noted one ran from 2pm through to as late as 7 or 8pm.

Clark said there was a balancing act between enforcing standing orders and restricting councillors to one opportunity to have a say on a matter, or letting councillors have multiple cracks at speaking to a topic.

Clark has taken the approach of letting councillors speak two, three, or even more times on matters, allowing them to make comments.

“I don’t mind people doing that. I think if people have got passion for a topic and want to speak, they can. Certainly, you want to curtail people from speaking for the sake of speaking.”

Cr Bond felt another reason council meetings were taking longer than needed was the information being provided to councillors to help them prepare for meetings.

“We only get our [agenda] papers two working days before a meeting. We get two working days to [prepare to] make massive decisions.”

On top of a belief that there was a lack of time to prepare, Bond felt there also needed to be more detail provided on various options.

“Those meetings run the way they do, in my opinion, because of the lack of information.”

Bond said she has raised that matter with Invercargill City Council CEO Michael Day.