Council culls meetings as staff call for results focus

Stephen Town, chief executive of Auckland Council. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Move has buy-in from most but minority fears a dumbing down of democracy.

The Super City is bogged down with meetings, talkfests not requiring a decision and too little constituency time, councillors say.

The solution has been to reduce the committee workload, spend more time on issues and improve councillors' governance skills.

But while the changes have the buy-in from most, a vocal minority fear a dumbing down of democracy.

Council chief executive Stephen Town told last Thursday's governing body meeting the changes were in response to a message from councillors that their diaries are overloaded with meetings.

Extra meetings were eating into constituency time, too much time was spent on items not requiring a decision, and the work programme was expanding by calls for reports or extra work that was not prioritised.

The six "reporting" subcommittees, where public participation plays a big part, will now meet every two or three months instead of every six weeks. The aim to is make them more outcome-focused.

The grunty whole-of-council committees have been left untouched, except for merging the budget committee with the finance and performance committee after the completion of the new 10-year budget this month.

But several reporting committee chairs are unhappy. Arts, culture and events committee chairman Alf Filipaina said it "let the public down".

Community, development and safety committee chairwoman Cathy Casey, who holds meetings around the region, said people saw the council as out of touch.

"Do not restructure the reporting committees. They are what makes this council tick," she said.

Other councillors, including George Wood, Chris Fletcher and Denise Krum, did not think the changes went far enough.

"Democracy is an expensive beast," said Franklin's Bill Cashmore, saying fewer meetings would bring a greater focus on delivering results.

Deputy mayor Penny Hulse said the council was not judged by how many committees it had but what got done. Councillor Chris Darby suggested the next council move to a Cabinet of leaders.

Ken Palmer, University of Auckland law professor and local government expert, said the review was timely. "There is nothing worse than turning up for a meeting, there is nothing new and you are simple regurgitating something you did at the last meeting."