A Wellington City councillor has taken her colleagues to task at the first public council meeting since Government intervention.
This morning’s Long-Term Plan, Finance, And Performance Committee meeting came just days after Local Government Minister Simeon Brown announced his intention to intervene at Wellington City Council, appointing a Crown Observer.
The council has to amend its Long-Term Plan after it voted to stop the sale of its 34% stake in Wellington Airport.
The sale was a key part of the council’s long-term plan with the money from it set to create an investment fund that would cover the council’s insurance risk – which is estimated to have blown out to $2.6 billion.
At today’s meeting, committee chairperson councillor Rebecca Matthews told fellow councillors it would not be an easy process.
“We are all going to see things that we love not happen, or happen later, or happen in a different way as a result of the decisions that have been made.”
She said councillors were under increased scrutiny from the government and the media and hoped to see an improvement in behaviour.
“That has been highlighted to us by the minister, and I think we all need to take that extremely seriously.”
Matthews said she had increasingly observed that if councillors had not voted for something they believed, it had no validity.
“We need to come up with this amendment and we need to respect the validity of the decision once we have made it.”
She said councillors would not all agree on the decisions that needed to be made for a financially prudent Long-Term Plan amendment, but they needed to get on and do it anyway.
“We need to look forward, get on with it and do so in a way that can increase confidence in our decision-making, otherwise there will not be a next election for us.”
Initial decisions on the amended LTP are expected on November 21, with a draft budget expected by December 11.
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