This is exactly the type of information that should be redacted under either the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act or the Official Information Act.
Organisations subject to this legislation are usually at pains to redact many names of their own staff members when releasing information.
Not to mention the extensive redaction of information that amounts to pages of black rectangles to hide the text.
It is appalling the same care was not given to private individuals and information as sensitive as their medical details.
Senior council staff have notified the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the council has commissioned an independent investigation.
Earlier this week Wellington City Council officials also miscalculated the benefit of reducing speed limits in the capital by more than $250 million.
The council calculated the benefit-cost-ratio (BCR) as 7.7 when it was actually -1.8.
A BCR of 7.7 is remarkably high and it’s astonishing nobody thought to question it further.
Some sympathy is warranted for council officials, considering this analysis was externally and independently peer-reviewed.
Officials should be able to rely on such reviews.
Consultation on the plan to reduce speeds to 30km/h on most streets in the capital has had to be abruptly stopped as a result.
In the meantime, council officials are contacting residents who have already made submissions to apologise.
Another misstep was revealed in April that the city’s street lamps were crashing to the ground because officials failed to properly take into account Wellington’s strong wind when designing new adaptors.
Council staff were previously alerted by members of the public that some lamps had started to droop. But these concerns were not escalated to their superiors because it was not thought to be a widespread problem.
As it turns out, all 17,000 adaptors need to be replaced.
All of this does not bode well for a left-leaning council led by a mayor who campaigned on making transformational change.
How can Wellingtonians trust the council to overhaul the city’s transport network with cycleways when it can’t even get the street lamps right?
How can we trust that consultation documents are actually correct after the 30km/h speed limit error?
How can we trust that our 12.3 per cent rates increase is money well spent?
The council has to dot its i’s and cross its t’s if it wants to push through controversial but significant changes.
It cannot afford technical errors that risk discrediting these plans.
Georgina Campbell is a Wellington-based reporter who has a particular interest in local government, transport, and seismic issues. She joined the Herald in 2019 after working as a broadcast journalist.
