A Hastings district councillor says that council attendance is not the only indication of how hard individual councillors work, without necessarily being paid, citing the latest 10-year review of the Hastings District Plan as an example.
Mick Lester was chairman of the district plan hearings committee and said he chaired 64 days of hearings, including dealing with 29,800 pages of evidence which had to be prepared for, heard and then decided on.
"As chair of that, I was there for all but three days when I had to be away for something else.
"The hearings committee worked their butts off over that period of time - certain councillors on that committee did an incredible amount of work, and we did much of it for practically nothing."
The other councillors on the committee were George Lyons, Cynthia Bowers, Kevin Watkins and Peter Kay, as well as representatives from the Maori joint committee at certain times.