HAMILTON COUNCIL CALLS MEETING TO DISCUSS WHEN TO HOLD MEETINGS
Pre-meeting meeting scheduled for Thursday. Or the Thursday after. A working group will confirm.
Hamilton City Council has scheduled a meeting next month to discuss the scheduling of future meetings. One Hamilton East ratepayer called it "the most Hamilton thing I've ever heard."
The meeting is listed internally as a "calendar alignment session". It will run ninety minutes and produce a draft framework for when subsequent meetings might be held. The framework then goes to a separate meeting for adoption.
Lorraine Petigrew, 71, said she'd been to the council building three times this month trying to find out when the roundabout submissions closed. "Every time I go, someone's in a meeting. Now they're in a meeting about the meetings. In 1974 you rang Mr Braithwaite at the works depot and he came round with a shovel."
Devon Akuhata, from Claudelands, said he got an email inviting feedback on the scheduling process. Submissions close before the meeting that decides how to schedule the submissions. "I read it twice. Then I had a lie down."
A council spokesperson, asked whether the pre-meeting meeting itself had been properly scheduled, said the matter was "under review by the relevant working group". The working group meets Tuesday. Possibly.
A consultant has been engaged to facilitate. Their fee has not been disclosed, pending a meeting.
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Reader Letters
Garry (Halswell)
Back in my day, we didn't have 'working groups' or 'consultants'. The bloke with the spanner sorted it on the spot. These meetings about meetings are just a bloody racket.
Leigh_Claudelands
Honestly, they are just putting off decisions. My cousin tried to get a permit sorted before Christmas. Still no answer! The system is ridiculous and nobody seems to notice.
couchgremlin
Lol, meetings about meetings. Next, they'll have meetings about whether to have meetings about meetings.
Trev_Hornby
Council's a piss-take. The feckers just shuffle paper around while collecting our rates like it's a bloody game.
Margaret_F
I remember when the whole city was just one meeting room. Somehow things got done. It didn't take a 'consultant' to show us how to tie our own shoelaces.
Hamiltonian_Dean
They say time is money. Well, I hope that consultant is accepting Monopoly money because this is a joke.