Assumptions are made again by the Southland Times (or council)
It should more correctly say ‘The public are expected to be excluded…’ Richard King may have put it in the Public Excluded section of the agenda but those councillors we elected should be thinking in our best interests. Make sure you let your elected members know before the go to the meeting. If they ignore you, don’t vote for them this election.
Sycamore and Ludlow show some arrogance and ignorance (underlining my emphasis)
Cr Ian Pottinger said he “absolutely” agreed the breakdown needed to be in the public arena so the process could be as transparent as possible. But Cr Sycamore said it would be inappropriate to discuss the breakdown estimates in public because it would give companies the upper hand when bidding for tenders.
There were always councillors who wanted things discussed publicly, but the council had to consider the best commercial option, he said.
Cr Ludlow agreed, and said ultimately the council was a business and needed to be run as astutely as possible. He said it was possible some councillors were “simply electioneering”.
If there were always councillors who wanted things discussed publicly then maybe they aren’t “simply electioneering”. Could it be those that maintain a stance of not putting too much in committee actually believe in transparency?
I would like to remind councillors that they could ask for numbers to be blacked out. We need to know so we can relay our views to our elected members because I would be concerned if, for example, the Entertainment Precinct took up 60% of the total budget or if the property purchases were for ‘open space’, and a multitude of other scenarios.
The reality is THIS CANNOT GO AHEAD until the engineering reports are done. Are these people idiots? Did we vote in idiots? Or did they become idiots?
Meanwhile I would like to point out that Council’s own Significance Policy states issues that have a lot of public interest are deemed significant, as such you need to be including us and consulting with us.
And another thing is that Richard King claims
“I have got the ability to decide what should be in open and what need not be, if council over-rules my call, that is fine, that’s their decision.”
But I’m told ICC procedure is that the chair gets to see the Agenda before it is released to the public. If the Mayor has seen it and has also allowed it to be in PE (as opposed to having sensitive information blacked out) then make sure you lobby him before the meeting also.
Whatever... 
That is the way the old boys network does things. Publicly ridiculing others rather than accepting there are differing points of view. There are ways to present things so that detail is not obvious and any costing are estimates anyway. Does the old boys network know something we don’t?
Transparency is something to embrace, not hide from but when you look at who is taking a stance on excluding notions of transparency once again you can see the ties back through Holdco and its offshoots. It is an ingrained culture that needs to be kept hidden as in the cold hard light of day it would be shown for what it is. Corruption.