Empty agendas mean board meetings put off

‘‘We always have a bit of a lag at the start of the year. We will hold a bit of an informal meeting and just have a bit of a yarn.’’

Richard Lyon

Pleasant Point Community Board

Delayed reports and the long holiday period are being blamed for the cancellation of the upcoming Temuka, Pleasant Point and Geraldine community boards’ meetings.

They have been cancelled due to a lack of items on the agendas meaning the new boards, elected in October 2019, will not have met since November 11 (Temuka), November 12 (Pleasant Point) and December 11 (Geraldine), with the next meetings now scheduled for March.

The cancelled meetings were due to take place on Monday (Temuka), Tuesday (Pleasant Point) and Wednesday (Geraldine).

Timaru District councillor and Pleasant Point Community Board chairman Richard Lyon said the issue was ‘‘not unusual’’.

‘‘We always have a bit of a lag at the start of the year.

‘‘We will hold a bit of an informal meeting and just have a bit of a yarn,’’ Lyon said.

Geraldine chairman Wayne O’Donnell said the board was waiting for a couple of reports to be completed.

‘‘They weren’t urgent, so there’s no point in rushing them if they’re not ready,’’ O’Donnell said.

‘‘But to be quite honest, this is a hectic time of year, especially with school

holidays. We already had one apology for the scheduled meeting, and it would be better if everyone came back with a clearer head.’’

Temuka chairman and Timaru District councillor Paddy O’Reilly said the board would have a few reports completed next month.

‘‘It’s not worth us coming together if we don’t have anything official to talk about,’’ he said.

‘‘We may have a few reports coming up in March, but for the upcoming meeting we had nothing official to discuss.’’

O’Reilly said he would make an effort to ‘‘catch up’’ with the other community board members before the next meeting.

‘‘I’m sure we could arrange something informal.’’