Councillor calls on others to meet standards

A Palmerston North city councillor with a perfect meeting attendance says other councillors should pull their weight.

Chris Teo-Sherrell went to all 78 meetings he was expected to attend, plus 11 meetings where his attendance was not necessary.

"There are some people who just aren't turning up to work," he said.

Palmerston North City Council has released attendance statistics for the June year for workshops, briefings, sub-committee, committee and council meetings.

He said a slew of councillors had a meeting attendance rate under 75 per cent – Vaughan Dennison, Jan Barnett, Anne Podd, Jim Jefferies, deputy mayor John Hornblow and Pat Kelly, Dr Teo-Sherrell said.

Mr Kelly had leave of absence for 13 meetings and Bruce Wilson had leave for five meetings, but Mr Wilson still got to 93.5 per cent of the meetings where he was a member.

He topped the total meeting attendance with 99, with Annette Nixon on 98, who went to 17 extra meetings.

Mr Wilson said he did not want to judge other councillors, because they all had to fit their lives around their council commitments. Mr Dennison, who went to 52 of 80 meetings (65 per cent), had the worst attendance rate.

Ms Barnett, whose meeting attendance rate was second lowest at 66.7 per cent, said the data did not take into account council appointments to other organisations. Her daughter had become ill six months after she became a councillor, but she did not want to use that as an excuse or go into more detail

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