How can the paper get things so wrong?

In today’s local newspaper the issue of the Notice of Motion over the Linklater Block completely misrepresents the position taken by Cr’s Gordon Cruden, Alison Wall, Anne Podd, and myself.

There is no issue around the fact that councillors will not be able to attend next week’s council meeting. As long as there is a quorum council properly conducts its business - end of story! To beat the newspaper article up into some kind of sour grapes that we will be away at conference is misleading the public.

The paper says, “Crs Podd, Wall, Cruden and Pope will be in Auckland next week at a planning and resource management conference in Auckland and they say the meeting will be unrepresentative of the council’s view.” What rubbish! The only effect our absence will have at the meeting is that we will not be present to vote against council taking an illegal action.

The issue is actually simple - the Linklater Block is included in the Draft Annual Plan. Submissions on the DAP are open until 20th May. Council is constrained by law to go into consultation and the resultant debates with an open mind. We cannot legally circumvent the consultation process by making a decision on any aspect of the DAP until after submissions close and are taken fully into account during our debate on the plan.

Cr Gordon Cruden and myself both wrote to the Mayor and pointed out the illegality of allowing the Notice of Motion to proceed. In my e-mail to the Mayor, which I reproduced in an earlier post, I emphasised that she is aware of my position on the Linklater Block and that my concerns are not about which way a vote may go. My concerns are simply that we must follow proper, legal procedure and allow everyone to make their submissions.

This farce reminds me of the old advert for Claytons that was around when I was a teenager - “the drink you have when you are not having a drink”. Well, this current consultation process is beginning to look like the “consultation you have when you are not having consultation”.

I well remember making my oral submissions and feeling that the councillors present were not taking a blind bit of notice of what I had to say. When I stood for council I made a pact with myself that I would do everything possible to ensure that others did not walk away from the submission process feeling that they had wasted their time. To bring an item forward and make a decision on it without considering submissions is arrogant. To do so before submissions have even closed is thumbing the nose at the very people we are elected to represent - and also illegal.

I emphasise - NO decision on the Linklater Block can be legally made until after submissions close. Nobody can move a resolution to sell it, keep it, or develop it, until after we have given full consideration to both written and oral submissions.

If the Mayor proceeds with this item as she has stated, she will be acting illegally. She has already received legal advice supporting the position Cr’s Gordon Cruden, Wall, Podd and I have taken.

The four councillors who issued a public call to the Mayor requesting that she follow proper procedure would have done so regardless of which item was to be decided upon. (Although, we would not have had to go public about this issue if the Mayor had deigned to respond to our e-mails). This is not about our absence from the meeting, nor is it about any concern with the way such a vote may go - it is all about respecting our legal and moral obligation to follow proper consultation process. How the paper could get it so very wrong begs the question - can we rely on anything we read in that publication being factual?