"The naming of the Conference Centre and removal of the war memorials are matters of policy for the council. We have no mandate or powers over policy decisions made by councils.
Mr Harrison was told that his "concerns about predetermination in the chief executive appointment process is also an area in which we do not have an enforcement role."
Mr Harrison alleged the mayor showed predetermination in ensuring applications received for the role of CEO were effectively ignored, calling for councillors to stand by current CEO Wayne Jack, who was understood to have reapplied for the position.
The OAG had explained the office had a specific formal enforcement role with financial conflicts of interest but this did not extend to non-financial conflicts of interest - such as this.
Mr Appleyard told Mr Harrison that challenges to decisions involving possible non-pecuniary conflicts of interest - such as pre-determination, or bias - were matters for the courts.
"If a person challenges a local authority's decision by taking judicial review proceedings, the courts could invalidate the decision because of bias on the part of a member of the authority.
"We understand that the chief executive appointment process is still under way. Therefore, the council has the opportunity to consider what measures, if any, it believes are necessary to ensure that the process is fair, and to reduce the risk of challenge of its decision."
Mr Harrison said he was disappointed the OAG would not be investigating.
"I am disappointed in that I understood that was the agency to go to but as you can see from their response it would be up to a judicial review," he said.
"Who I feel sorry about are of course the five or six people who've spent weeks and weeks getting a CV together and having the mayor tell the councillors, "well I don't care how many we get, we're not going to take them seriously, we'll keep the status quo', that's a concern."
Yesterday Mr Dalton said he was "just delighted we can get out with positive things rather than muck around with negative things."
He said he hoped this result had given Mr Harrison "the assurance he needed to now lay the matter to rest".
On the Conference Centre query, an OAG spokesman told Hawke's Bay Today it was outside their mandate to look into policy decisions made by councils.
Aside from Mr Harrisons' complaints, an OAG spokesman said they had received another query last week relating to the CE appointment process - which they had also responded to yesterday.
Mr Harrison was one of at least four people to complain to the OAG about the council over the past fortnight.
"Clearly it's a sign of the employers, who are the ratepayers, being totally frustrated with the attitude of their employees, who are the highly paid councillors and mayor," he said.