The taxing cost of conferencing for our city’s leaders

Conferences have their advocates and their detractors.

Some say they are junkets. Others say they are essential factfinding, networking missions.

Sorting out which are which was the main business of the latest Palmerston North City Council meeting, which had a light agenda dominated by a raft of conference ‘‘opportunities’’.

The big one was the Local Government New Zealand annual meeting and conference in Christchurch in July.

The council is sticking with tradition.

The mayor goes. The chief executive goes. Two councillors go as delegates, and up to another two as observers.

The costs are something like this.

Early bird registration for the full conference is $1410, times 6, so janine.rankin@fairfaxmedia.co.nz

$8460.

Flights, if they get in quick, $89 each each way for seat plus bag, times 12, are $1068.

Accommodation, for two nights each, assuming they do not share rooms, the cheapest recommended by conference organisers is $195 a night, times 12, is $2340.

All up, an outing costing in the vicinity of at least $12,000.

It might not be huge in the context of running the city, but it’s not small fry either.

And if there was one conference that could claim to be essential for local government, this would be it.

Past governments have been pretty dismissive of anything recommended by its remits, but there could be better hope this year that the newish Labour-led government might take notice.

The conference menu continued with the Progressive Cities Conference in Fremantle, Western Australia.

The decision was for one councillor to go. Conference costs: $1100, travel $1400, accommodation $570. Total: $3070.

Cr Lew Findlay questioned that one, but mayor Grant Smith argued there were global issues and the costs were not much steeper than attending a conference in New Zealand.

Just testing that theory, one councillor has been approved to attend a rather similarly themed conference, Developing New Zealand, in Wellington.

The council’s own chief executive Heather Shotter is a speaker at this one.

Conference costs $1899, accommodation $120, travel costs a bargain at $80. Total: $2099.

That four people are going to a local government elected members forum in Wellington for $80 apiece should be allowed to fly below the radar.

All up, approvals on one day: $17,469. Or more, if they miss those Grabaseat fares.

Just out of interest, the council’s policy is not to pay for any spouse or partner travelling with councillors to conferences and seminars, with the occasional exception of the mayor’s partner.

The decisions made at just one meeting will make a significant dent in the council’s $72,336 annual budget for conference attendance and training opportunities.

At the start of the meeting, that fund stood at $47,864, less any outstanding amounts that had been approved but not presented for payment yet.

Being three-quarters of the way through the financial year, the pressure is off culling the ‘‘opportunity’’ list in the interests of keeping spending within the budget.

This begs the question of whether that budget was a bit too generous in the first place.

Ratepayers expect the people they elect who govern the city to develop a level of expertise on a range of topics relevant to making good decisions.

They also expect them to be prudent with their spending and it is debatable whether this batch of spending struck the right balance.

End note

The city council reporter’s household has been recognised as a champion in the field of recycling.

Our bin got tagged the other day in part of the council’s random recognition project to acknowledge people who consistently recycle the right things.

This was a pleasant surprise, as it is almost certain that the occasional wrong thing finds its way into the bin.

But, it is clean.

If your recycling bin gets smelly, that is an obvious sign you have done something wrong.

And if you have once visited the recycling plant and noticed how clean it is not, and seen people sorting the treasure from the rubbish with their hands, you have to be shocked into making sure you’re not contributing to the problem.

The recycling effort at our place began so long ago it is unnecessary to put a number on it.

We lived in one of the first two cul-de-sacs in Palmerston North to trial a kerbside recycling programme.

It involved newspaper, aluminium cans, plastic soft drink bottles and tin cans, separately presented at the gate tied up in plastic grocery bags.

The notion of plastic bags being an integral part of the recycling process became so ingrained that using them all the time was a hard habit to break.

There was a moment when one considered whether one was too close to the council and had some sort of conflict of interest that should prevent one from going into the draw for a grocery voucher.

But the entry’s gone in anyway.