Coast Regional Council annual report to be debated in secret
From local democracy reporter Brendon McMahon:
The public will be excluded from open debate when the West Coast Regional Council receives and adopts the draft 2022 annual report tomorrow - three months late.
Keeping the report behind closed doors is being justified by council management as something the auditor requires.
Last week the council's Risk and Assurance Committee 'workshopped' the draft report for several hours "line by line" after a planned extraordinary meeting in December to finalise the report was shelved.
Chief executive Heather Mabin said this morning there was nothing untoward with the draft and discussing it in the confidential meeting was "just the auditor insisting it must be adopted in-committee".
"We are not driving this classification to in-committee."
Mabin confirmed staff severance was mentioned in the report as this was a financial reporting requirement.
Reporting of the controversial agreement between the council-owned VCS Ltd and the council chairman's own company Birchfield Minerals regarding the future sale of the Grey Valley dredge, had again been disclosed in the annual report, as it had been prior to it dropping off the annual report in recent years.
Risk and Assurance Committee chairperson Frank Dooley said today he did not know why it had been placed in the in-committee section tomorrow and he would be questioning it.
It was a council document and he could see no justifiable reason for it not to be discussed in public.
"I don't know why. That is a question I have for the chief executive. I believe that the audit report should be adopted in the public meeting, and I will be moving that way."
Dooley said most of the glitches in the report had been "ironed out" last week during the workshop.
If the auditor wanted to discuss an aspect of the annual report in public excluded that could be done without having to excluded the rest of the annual report, he said.
"The balance should be in open meeting. If the document is going to be adopted it's a public document...It's not the auditors document, it's the document of the council and a review of council's performance."
The regional council changed auditors last year from Audit NZ to Ernst and Young.
*Public interest journalism funded through NZ On Air
⚠️ DOGS DIE IN HOT CARS. If you love them, don't leave them. ⚠️
It's a message we share time and time again, and this year, we're calling on you to help us spread that message further.
Did you know that calls to SPCA about dogs left inside hot cars made up a whopping 11% of all welfare calls last summer? This is a completely preventable issue, and one which is causing hundreds of dogs (often loved pets) to suffer.
Here are some quick facts to share with the dog owners in your life:
👉 The temperature inside a car can heat to over 50°C in less than 15 minutes.
👉 Parking in the shade and cracking windows does little to help on a warm day. Dogs rely on panting to keep cool, which they can't do in a hot car.
👉 This puts dogs at a high risk of heatstroke - a serious condition for dogs, with a mortality rate between 39%-50%.
👉 It is an offence under the Animal Welfare Act to leave a dog in a hot vehicle if they are showing signs of heat stress. You can be fined, and prosecuted.
SPCA has created downloadable resources to help you spread the message even further. Posters, a flyer, and a social media tile can be downloaded from our website here: www.spca.nz...
We encourage you to use these - and ask your local businesses to display the posters if they can. Flyers can be kept in your car and handed out as needed.
This is a community problem, and one we cannot solve alone. Help us to prevent more tragedies this summer by sharing this post.
On behalf of the animals - thank you ❤️
Poll: Would you rather: Christmas in summer forever or winter forever?
Just a bit of a fun poll to get you thinking.
If you had to live out your Christmas days, would you prefer it was a summer Christmas or a winter Christmas?
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62.2% Summer
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36.4% Winter
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1.5% Other - I'll share below
Worst Xmas ever?
There's a a lot of planning that goes into Christmas day and sometimes things just don't go to plan. But it can be a good thing - a family mishap or hilarious memory that you can laugh about in Christmases to come.
Whether you burnt the dinner or were stranded at an airport...
Share your Christmas mishaps below!
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