Mr Power was responding to questions from the Otago Daily Times after Cr Peter Garvan detailed four points explaining why he opposed the multimillion-dollar floating luxury hotel proposed by the community-owned Oamaru Licensing Trust in an advertisement in the paper last Saturday. Mr Power did not offer a reason for his determination, but said it was "difficult to comment meaningfully on the matter at this time" because there was as yet no application for resource consent lodged with the council and "any comment made would be purely speculative".
Mr Power’s predecessor as council chief executive, Michael Ross, weighed in on a similar situation last year after Waitaki Mayor Gary Kircher stood down as one of five original directors of Oamaru Adventure Park Ltd, a company established last March to advance an Oamaru Harbour area zipline project."Given council’s close involvement with this project to date it is clear to me that an independent commissioner will need to hear this application once it is finally lodged with us," he said in April last year.
As yet, no resource consent for a zipline has been lodged with the council. When Cr Garvan was asked if he would excuse himself from future council decisions about the floating hotel after paying for an advertisement to denounce it he said it "was not a matter for council at this point".
But he added the council ought to be using independent commissioners regularly for harbour matters.
"In respect of harbour matters, I believe the council owns a lot of land and I believe independent commissioners are the way to go," he said.
"So, I’m freely taking the position I’m obviously not going to be on any hearings panel to do with the hotel.
"I believe the council itself has a lot of interest in the harbour ... I don’t see any problems here and an independent commissioner should make the decisions."
The Quality Planning website — a partnership of the Ministry for the Environment, New Zealand Planning Institute, Resource Management Law Association, New Zealand Institute of Surveyors, Local Government New Zealand and New Zealand Institute of Architects — states "generally accepted ... good practice" dictates independent commissioners should be used in place of internal commissioners when: "the council, or an individual elected representative, may otherwise be perceived to have an actual or perceived conflict of interest", or "one or more committee members may have, or may be perceived to have, a closed mind on the proposal".
