Tauranga City Council conflict: Andrew Hollis lays Code of Conduct complaint against Larry Baldock

The day after a meeting to sort out council in-fighting, a Tauranga city councillor laid a code of conduct complaint about a colleague's Facebook post.

The complaint was laid by councillor Andrew Hollis against former deputy mayor Larry Baldock on Saturday.

It followed an emergency council meeting on Friday about strained relationships between elected members, where the council agreed to bring in a Crown team to monitor the situation.

This council term has been marred by clashes between members, with an official information request for their texts and emails during May and June uncovering more conflict.

Hollis said his complaint was about part of a Facebook post on councillor Baldock's page that referenced the information request.

Baldock's August 4 post ended with him saying he was pursuing some inquiries with the Offices of the Ombudsman and Chief Archivist in regard to what, in his opinion, "seems to be the deliberate attempt by one councillor to avoid scrutiny by deleting all txts from his phone prior to handing it in to staff".

Baldock confirmed to the Bay of Plenty Times at the time that he was talking about Hollis. Hollis denied the accusation.

The information release included files of texts from all elected members' phones except Hollis'.

Council staff have said there were no texts on Hollis' phone that met the search criteria for the request. Personal phones were not searched.

Texts attributed to Hollis, however, appeared in other councillors' text logs.

Hollis told the Bay of Plenty Times yesterday the suggestion he deleted his texts was "incorrect" and, in his view, "borderline defamatory".

"I felt my integrity was impugned."

Tauranga City councillor Andrew Hollis. Photo / File

He said he also searched his personal phone for the terms specified in the request and did not find anything relevant.

He said he asked Baldock to meet and talk about it several times, and for him to retract the post but Baldock refused.

So he decided to go down the route of making a complaint, which would trigger an official investigation.

He said he waited until after the "chaos" of last week was out of the way to take that step.

Hollis said he was "not looking for a punishment" but would let the complaint process run its course unless Baldock made some move towards reconciliation.

"Any movement towards reconciliation would be received graciously."

Councillor Larry Baldock during Tuesday's council meeting. Photo / George Novak

Baldock said the matter was now with an investigator.

"It is disappointing after Friday's meeting when we are meant to be trying to put all this behind us. If I looked into all the texts and messages with insulting comments about myself I'd have a dozen code of conducts."

He said he had removed the statement about deleted texts from the post at the request of council chief executive Marty Grenfell, after Hollis first raised it.

He said he was waiting for "clear evidence" about the situation with Hollis' texts before responding.

Baldock said he had asked the Chief Archivist office whether they considered it worthy of investigation but had no definite response yet. A spokesman confirmed it was assessing the request.

"I am waiting to see whether there is a further investigation and an explanation into how these texts did not appear on his council phone or his personal phone," Baldock said.

He said he exchanged emails about the issue with Hollis but would not meet with him to discuss it.

"I made it clear a long time ago I would never meet with Andrew because I simply cannot trust how he will report any comments and twist things on Facebook. That's still my position," he claimed.

Councillor Larry Baldock during Friday's emergency meeting. Photo / File

Council general manager of people and engagement Susan Jamieson confirmed a complaint had been received and was being independently reviewed to see whether it needed further investigation.

"It has yet to go through the process which would determine whether it proceeds and until that has occurred, it would not be appropriate to provide further information."

Last month the council introduced a new process for complaints, that would see a panel of three independent experts - retired judges and the like - adjudicating some complaints rather than the council.

Jamieson said the panel was not yet established but she hoped to put a selection of potential candidates to the council in the next two to three weeks.

In March, Hollis made a code of conduct complaint about an incident where mayor Tenby Powell called him a "f****** climate-denying racist" in a meeting with council staff and other elected members.

Tauranga mayor Tenby Powell during Friday's meeting. Photo / File

Powell was found to have breached the code censured by the council and apologised to Hollis.

The council spent $15,496.54 on legal and investigation fees on the matter, the Bay of Plenty Times learned through an official information request.

A similar amount was spent investigating two complaints by Baldock against councillor John Robson last year. Robson was cleared on both counts.

A code of conduct is a set of rules for how elected members behave in their roles.