A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
This newspaper gives its full backing to the call by councillor Tony Robinson for Gisborne District Council to conduct as many discussions as possible in forums that are open to the public — while noting that this should not even be up for debate.
Contrary to a staff response that
the Chief Ombudsman had “kind of just put it out there” regarding his expectations for increased transparency and accountability in the way councils use workshops, Peter Boshier and his office have made it clear that all councils are on watch, and what his expectations are. These are set out in his findings released in October following an investigation of the practices of eight councils, not including GDC — with the key expectation being that workshops should be open to the public by default, unless it is reasonable to close a workshop on a case-by-case basis.
The stated view that GDC has a “pretty good process of workshops” belies the fact they have excluded the public, by not notifying them — apart from the odd one where people with a vested interest were invited. (An example cited of that was from 2015.)
It seems this will be rectified, with the suggestion that workshops be scheduled in the governance work plan, meaning they are public — unless there is a reason to exclude the public.
That the council “only needed to release one workshop” when The Gisborne Herald requested minutes from the 18 workshops held this term was given as evidence of good process — “because everything else that was discussed at those workshops was now in the public forum by way of reports, and you made the decisions”.
