Live from Ashburton: Council keen to boost transparency
By local democracy reporter Jonathan Leask:
Extending livestreaming to more meetings is being considered by the Ashburton District Council in a bid to enhance public accessibility and transparency.
Environment Canterbury voted to make all of its briefings and workshops public by default at a council meeting in July.
The regional council is rolling out plans to have all its meetings, and some briefings and workshops, livestreamed from September.
The decision followed recommendations from the Ombudsman’s 2023 report into the way councils conduct their business.
In that report, Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier said he was pleased that the majority of councils he investigated livestream meetings as it "greatly" improved transparency.
In Ashburton, the council has been livestreaming its meetings since 2019.
Democracy and engagement group manager Toni Durham said the Ombudsman's meeting recommendations relate mostly to full council and standing committee meetings, which the council already livestreams.
“His recommendations also apply to workshops and briefings, which we don’t currently livestream, but we are considering how we make more of them publicly accessible.”
The full council meetings, audit and risk, and public hearings are livestreamed.
The six-weekly activity briefing meetings, where each department provides an update on work programmes and budgets, are considered workshops where no decisions are made and are not livestreamed.
It’s unlikely the resources are available to livestream meetings for groups such as the Biodiversity Advisory Group and the Road Safety Co-ordinating Committee, Durham said.
The Ombudsman had investigated eight councils (Ashburton was not one of them) over concerns local government was using closed-door workshops to make decisions free from public scrutiny.
The findings, published at the end of October, confirmed that some councils had been closing all workshops to the public by default.
It highlighted Local Government Act requirements that councils should conduct business in an “open, transparent, and democratically accountable manner”.
Chief executive Hamish Riach had said this was the case in Ashburton.
The Ombudsman report made 25 recommendations that the council was reviewing, Durham said.
“To give effect to many of the recommendations there will be resourcing implications which we are working through,” Durham said.
⚠️ 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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61.8% Summer
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36.5% Winter
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1.7% 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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