Near-miss for Westland mayor facing council showdown
Westland District Mayor Bruce Smith had been preparing for the ultimate showdown – a no confidence vote by a rebel faction in his council.
It is understood four councillors were planning to vote no confidence, and four against, at yesterday’s council meeting. This meant the mayor would have had to vote in confidence of himself to break the deadlock. But the rebels, led by councillor David Carruthers, have since withdrawn their motion from the agenda, saying there was no longer any point in the vote as their reason was now void.
That reason was to protest the suspension of beleaguered council chief executive Tanya Winter, who Carruthers said the mayor was unauthorised to dismiss without running it by council. Winter resigned on Saturday. Councillors originally voted in February not to renew Winter’s five-year contract, around the same time the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) announced it was investigating council assets’ manager Vivek Goel. Winter was Goel’s supervisor. While the SFO will not say what the investigation is about, The Press has since revealed Goel had arranged for a business run by a cake decorator in South Auckland to build a $7 million sewage plant in Franz Josef.
A committee, comprising the mayor, one of his deputies Latham Martin, long-time ally Durham Havill and Graeme Olson, suspended Winter in early April for allegedly failing to tell councillors of the SFO investigation.
But Carruthers, a lawyer, wrote to Smith saying Winter’s suspension was unauthorised and invalid. ‘‘It is an intolerable abuse of procedure to commit council to serious decisions with very serious outcomes when you know a substantial number of us oppose your actions, give us no information or opportunity to participate and then retrospectively seek a council resolution ratifying your unauthorised actions,’’ he wrote.
A day after Carruthers’s letter to Smith, the decision was put to council and five councillors voted in favour of the suspension, with three against.
The division in council has a geographical basis. Havill and Olson represent the northern ward, while Eatwell and Lash represent the southern.
Carruthers said the whole point of the protest was now void. ‘‘The resignation of the chief executive has changed things and there is no point in pursuing the matter.’’
Smith said he wasn’t surprised the no confidence vote was dropped and put the motion down to inexperience. ’’When you get a group of new councillors there are some that struggle with what a committee can and can’t do.’’