Council’s

Major decisions impacting Wellington will be in the hands of a skeleton crew of city councillors as New Zealand heads into lockdown to halt the spread of coronavirus.

Wellington City Council held an urgent meeting yesterday, following Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s escalation of the country’s pandemic response to alert level 4, essentially putting the public into lockdown for at least four weeks.

A council paper tabled yesterday proposed introducing a fourperson executive team to make decisions on behalf of most committees and subcommittees.

It also proposed requiring only two of those members to be physically present to sign off on those decisions.

City councillors, five of whom took part in the meeting from home by audio-visual link, voted to delegate decision-making powers where the chief executive believed an urgent decision was required but a council or committee meeting could not be held.

Those decisions will be made by mayor Andy Foster and deputy mayor Sarah Free.

‘‘In the event that it is not practical for myself or deputy mayor Free to make a decision, that decision can be made by any two elected members,’’ Foster said.

Committee quorums, the number of people needed to validate a decision, have also been reduced to two.

‘‘This will allow us to do our bit by making decisions for the good of the city,’’ Foster said.

The new voting arrangements will be reviewed once New Zealand’s Covid-19 alert level falls back to level two.

Outside of the pandemic, council committees comprise up to 15 councillors, with up to eight of them required to be present to validate decisions.

Officers had suggested having an executive committee of Foster, Free and councillors Jill Day and Malcolm Sparrow. However, the council instead voted that any two other councillors could step in if required.

Ahead of the meeting, Day, who is chairwoman of the strategy and policy committee, said she was not convinced by the proposal. Allocating a certain number of councillors to make decisions but not determining who they would be, was more practical.

‘‘We don’t know who’s going to