Councillors show up to meetings

A baby and a hip replacement were responsible for two Palmerston North City councillors’ meeting attendances dipping below 90 per cent in the last six months of 2017.

Aleisha Rutherford was granted leave in May, when Max was born, but still managed to get to 38 of the 56 meetings she was expected to attend in the second half of the year.

‘‘I’m fully back on board now. We have a lot of support, and support from colleagues too.’’

Rutherford said Max, coming up 10 months old, was brought in on visits to the council building on Mondays so she could feed him, and she was missing some evening functions so she could put him to bed.

‘‘People will see me in a slightly different capacity. I love my role with council, but there are some things I want to do with him.’’

Gabrielle Bundy-cooke was granted leave from nine meetings while she recuperated from hip surgery, but confused the records by turning up for some meetings when she felt able even though she had been excused.

Bundy-cooke said she was granted six weeks’ leave, but attended what she could. ‘‘Otherwise you get out of the loop. There is so much going on.’’

Five councillors had a perfect attendance record, including Brent Barrett, Susan Baty, and Lorna Johnson.

Adrian Broad and Bruno Petrenas managed to score more than 100 per cent because they attended meetings that were not compulsory for them because they were not members of the committees.

But mayor Grant Smith and the 15 councillors did not necessarily have to be physically present at meetings to qualify for attendance.

They got a tick if they apologised for being absent on council business, and they also qualified if they missed up to half of a meeting. Records were not kept for whether they arrived late or left early.

Smith, who achieved a 95 per cent record, said he was ‘‘luke warm’’ about the value of the attendance record.

He said they were not a true reflection of the amount of work councillors did, both inside and outside the council chamber.

‘‘This is a blunt, crude mechanism, until we have something better in place to capture councillors’ workloads.’’

Smith said some councillors were working close to a full-time job managing their meeting commitments, planning, portfolio work and special projects. For example, all except Broad would soon be spending three full days touring wastewater treatment plants in Hamilton, Rotorua, Taupo and Cambridge in preparation for planning Palmerston North’s approach to wastewater management.

In recognition for the extra work councillors were being expected to do, Smith had made changes to the system of committee membership.

During 2017, all councillors were members of all seven major committees. That has been changed, to limit membership to 10 for six of the committees, and eight for audit and risk.

‘‘There was a school of thought that some councillors really wanted to focus on some more than others.

‘‘Some had skills that were better suited to something like community development rather than finance or sport and recreation.

‘‘It’s about sharing the load a bit more.’’

All councillors could still attend and contribute to committee meetings when they were not a member, but it would not harm their attendance record if they did not.