Baby dents meeting attendance record

A baby in the chamber has dented Palmerston North city councillor Aleisha Rutherford’s previously near-perfect record of meeting attendance.

The council’s youngest councillor went on parental leave in May, with baby Max arriving three weeks earlier than planned.

He was born at home on May 18 just hours after his mum had left a council meeting.

Baby care saw her miss 21 meetings, despite being there for former chief executive Paddy Clifford’s farewell when Max was seven days old, dropping her attendance rate to 80 per cent.

Rutherford has now finished her approved leave of absence and is back in meetings with Max. Max is likely to be a regular at meetings until the end of 2017. Once he starts moving about, extended family will be called upon to care for him on meeting days.

Most of the other councillors scored 90 per cent or better for attendances at meetings in the 12 months to the end of June.

The only others who slipped below that were Gabrielle Bundycooke, who missed nine of the 89 meetings she could have attended, and Leonie Hapeta, who attended 100 out of 113.

The annual roll call was harder to relate to previous report cards this year because committee memberships changed after October’s local government elections.

Councillors used to be able to be judged for how many of the meetings they attended as a member of the particular committees.

But since the end of 2016, every councillor has been a member of every committee.

The results showed Adrian Broad and Bruno Petrenas attending more meetings than they were required to.

Newly-elected councillor Brent Barrett achieved a perfect score, as did Rachel Bowen, and mayor Grant Smith apparently missed only two meetings during the year. There are qualifications.

If the mayor or councillors apologise for absence because they are on council business, they are marked as being present.

The system also sets a 50 per cent threshold for qualifying as being in attendance, enabling councillors to be late, leave early or take a break in the middle, and still get a tick for being present.

Some meetings, such as consideration of the annual budget, could go all day, but each annual plan submissions hearing, limited to two hours, is counted as a separate meeting.