Inauguration Day

At 7.30pm tonight the new council was inaugurated. Since the election on 9th October I have been kept pretty busy with workshops and meetings. We had a meeting on 13th and spent all day on Friday 15th and Saturday 16th in “retreat” at Wharerata discussing the structure of the new council. On Monday, 18th, we met again to finalise some details. Unfortunately, these sessions were not well structured and normal process was not adhered to, making these hours seem more like a talkfest than an orderly way of reaching consensus.

So far, the Mayor has not put forward any policy or indication of the direction she envisions (apart from “putting the community back into council”) which makes it difficult to understand what it is she wishes to achieve in this term. Several councillors suggested we follow the process used by the previous Mayor whereby discussions led to consensus and the council went to its inaugural meeting having already agreed to who would do what. I had hoped that this council would follow suit as I felt it was important that our public have confidence in our ability to get on with the job and, especially, that there was some unity.
However, this was not to be and tonight’s meeting gave the gallery some interesting moments to watch.

So, the new council has been sworn in and the real business starts.