A working party of councillors will review job descriptions for the leadership at the Otago Regional Council.
Leadership at the council has been tumultuous at times recently.
Deputy chairman Michael Laws is at present the subject of a code of conduct complaint about comments about council staff he made in the media.
Job descriptions for the council chairman and deputy chairman were presented to the council’s governance, communications and engagement committee yesterday.
Cr Laws, who chaired the meeting, almost stopped debate before it started by saying new job descriptions could only properly be imposed on the chairman or deputy chairman before they took up their roles, in the next triennium, and not mid-stride, now.
However, he went on to say he opposed some of the expectations contained in the job descriptions attached to yesterday’s staff report.
‘‘If you go down the line of imposing these today, there would be a resignation at the end of this particular meeting from me, because there is no way in the world that I could meet any of those views, because philosophically I would be opposed.’’
One example Cr Laws raised was the expectation that councillors and staff had a clear understanding of governance and operations and ‘‘maintained the differing roles as much as possible’’.
He also challenged the staff report, which said the job descriptions had been reviewed by the chief executive, chairman and deputy chairman and feedback incorporated.
‘‘I was asked and I said, ‘No way, I do not agree with this at all’.’’
Cr Hilary Calvert said she did not believe councillors and staff had a clear understanding of governance and operations as separated.
The council was trying to clarify that understanding ‘‘but we don’t at the moment’’.
‘‘And I don’t know that we are going to end up agreeing about those things: that there is a line that we fall on either side of.
‘‘I think that we are going to end up with something much more nuanced than that when we come to the end of that.’’
Cr Calvert said she was concerned the job descriptions were presented as a matrix that included so-called ‘‘expected outcomes’’.
‘‘Expected outcomes — whose expectation is it?’’
Council chairman Andrew Noone said one aspect of being chairman was a human factor, or ‘‘personality’’.
He also said a chairman or woman would make mistakes and ‘‘you get your rough edges knocked off you’’.
But he supported the creation of job descriptions as a framework for people who took on the job, he said.
Cr Kevin Malcolm was supportive of the job descriptions but had a series of amendments to make.
Several councillors said they supported the job descriptions.
Cr Bryan Scott said he was happy to join the working party if it was a constructive exercise.
Cr Gretchen Robertson said the job descriptions looked great.
‘‘This is how I would expect my chair and my deputy chair to behave,’’ she said.
‘‘These are the standards I need from my chair and my deputy. I am really comfortable with them.’’
The working party includes Crs Laws, Calvert, Scott, Robertson and Noone.
Councillors will consider updated job descriptions at the council’s December meeting.
