Councillor pushes staff for CCTV project information
“You see a figure and you ask some questions. Aren’t we entitled as councillors to get it?”
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An Invercargill City Councillor has taken an unusual approach to extract information from council staff and says he wants more transparency around the city’s CCTV project.
At a June council committee meeting, $140,210 was listed as being spent on the council’s CCTV camera project to date.
Following that meeting, councillor Ian Pottinger emailed council staff asking for a breakdown of where that $140,210 had been spent.
“Nothing has advanced, we haven’t got any cameras, so I said; ‘what is this about’?”
“You see a figure and you ask some questions. Aren’t we entitled as councillors to get it?”
“If it has got confidential components to it, then fair enough, tell me in your eyes-only type thing,” Pottinger said.
“Just sitting back and watching [as a councillor], that’s not your job. Just questions, you are not telling [staff]what to do.”
Pottinger said council staff responded to him that it was too difficult to provide that information.
“It’s just a lack of transparency. They have publicly listed the $140,210 and they won’t tell me what it is about,” Pottinger said after being approach by The Tribune about the matter.
Although council CEO Michael Day said councillors will be provided the information.
In a written statement to The Tribune, Day said it had been agreed previously that the CCTV project information would be supplied to councillors at a council meeting next month.
“This report containing the breakdown of costs is expected at the Infrastructure and Projects Committee meeting on 6 August,” Day said.
Pottinger confirmed he had taken the unusual step of putting a Local Government Official Information & Meetings Act [LGOIMA] request to his own council asking for information on the CCTV project.
Any person may request, from any local authority, that any specific official information be made available.
In the case of councils, official information requests traditionally are lodged by media or members of the public, rather than elected members.
“It’s the first time on council I have had to do a LGOIMA [request],” Pottinger, who himself has worked in the electronics industry outside his council commitments, said.
Pottinger said he had become increasingly frustrated around what he thought was a lack of action on the CCTV project.
Cameras are expected to be in place by the end of the year, although Pottinger was surprised it had taken that long.
As part of the June projects and finance meeting update on the CCTV project, the agenda stated that council staff have been working with a preferred supplier to finalise costs - both capital spend and ongoing operational costs such as data storage and licencing.
“Alongside this, we have been working on infrastructure and operational planning (how ICC will run the systems and support police).
“We have developed a five-year cost plan, which will be tabled to the council for final approval. Meanwhile, delivery planning is still underway.”
Isn’t this a Nobby project? We all should know by now how he loves to do things behind closed doors.