“It is a reflection in the community of some frustration or just what is happening in life for these individuals at the moment.”
Ensuring the health and safety of staff was paramount and the new measures would help ensure council offices were kept secure.
“Our No.1 priority for staff is that they feel safe and have a healthy work environment. Everyone has the right to feel safe at work; from that perspective, the rise in this behaviour starts to take a toll in this role.”
The district council was implementing several measures and upgrading the customer service support space in the Te Awamutu office.
“The current grille could no longer be serviced or repaired, so it needed to be replaced. While construction is underway, the reception area will be temporarily relocated to the left of the current area, providing a smaller but fully functional customer support space.”
During construction, customer support staff would continue to assist with all inquiries, payments, and services, maintaining the council’s commitment to delivering these core services to the community.
The project follows on from similar upgrades to the Cambridge customer support office in 2021 and was expected to be complete by the end of September.
There would also be increased training for those types of occurrences and security systems installed.
“We are here to work with the community and support them. While there may be some things that the Waipā District Council does that the community may not agree with, it is important to remember that when you are working with the council you are also dealing with someone’s family member. We are people who work and live in the community, we just ask people to be considerate and treat us like you would a member of your family,” Sheedy said.
After-hours room bookings for council committee rooms and chambers would not be available until the work was complete.
Many council services can be done online by going to waipadc.govt.nz/do-it-online. Its call centre can be reached 24/7 by calling 0800 WAIPADC (924 723).