Editorial: Having confidence in our council

There are a number of reasons councils can close its doors to the public.

There comes a time in council meetings when the media and local government tragics who fill the public gallery get the boot.

There are several reasons council can enter what is called a "public excluded" session but it's most commonly used to discuss commercially sensitive information or to protect someone's privacy.

Items discussed in confidence at Tuesday's Whanganui District Council meeting included a WDC Holdings Ltd report, information on wastewater treatment plant settlement and the Sarjeant Gallery redevelopment.

We now know the later resulted in council voting to guarantee the Sarjeant Gallery redevelopment with $3.9 million of ratepayers money.

The reason given for taking this decision in confidence was to protect the privacy of donors who wanted to remain anonymous.

But it also means the public was not privy to how councillors arrived at their decision.

Councillor Philippa Baker-Hogan earlier called a vote to bring the item into the public part of the meeting but lost.

This follows her thinly veiled accusation at a committee meeting last week that public exclusion could be used to hide debate from the public.

It prompted councillor Kate Joblin to ask Ms Baker-Hogan for evidence to back her claims because "if anything I've seen the drive from Mayor Hamish to put as much in public as he possibly can and erring on that side rather than he other side".

Ms Joblin is right, there is no evidence and none was offered.

And Mr McDouall said of the Sarjeant, "I can commit ... that we will release to the public everything we can."

While all may be above board it was nevertheless good to see the necessity to go into public exclusion tested.

Councillors should always have to think about and justify the need to keep any discussion from the public.

When these debates do go behind closed doors councillors become the last representatives of the public able to keep a check on what is going on.

And that's what Ms Baker-Hogan was asking councillors to think about, as futile as it may have been.