Council conduct spat continues

Horowhenua’s fractious council is at it again, with one elected official training his sights on another.

The latest spat comes after councillor Ross Campbell posted a video on Facebook where he talked about the supposedly secret business of a publicly-excluded council meeting.

The cone-of-silence breach has got other councillors’ backs up and Campbell is facing action against his alleged violation of the council code of conduct, which will be discussed at a Horowhenua District Council meeting on Wednesday.

In the contentious video, Campbell said the closed-door meeting was about councillors seeking a change the reporting system between the chief executive David Clapperton and mayor Michael Feyen, which would ‘‘effectively alienate the mayor and allow the chief executive to avoid reporting through the mayor’’.

Campbell said the move would place ‘‘the mayor in a vacuum’’ and took away the authority and trust the voters placed in their elected leader.

What happened at the April 11 meeting committee was ‘‘absolutely wrong’’, Campbell said.

Council documents say Councillor Neville Gimblett intends to move a motion that Campbell ‘‘repeatedly lied about the [council’s] building reports, selectively disclosed in-committee information, and denigrated other councillors’’.

An alternative notice of motion was for the council to investigate the complaint against Campbell.

This is the second time in just over a year that Campbell has had a code of conduct complaint laid against him.

In March 2016, a complaint was made over Campbell calling the council ‘‘corrupt’’ in a TV interview.

He was censured for this.