Free parking in the city centre, a centre for sports excellence in Mount Maunganui, and the council stance on the Rena resource consent application are to be debated at today's Tauranga City Council meeting.

The free parking debate is being brought before council through an application by Mainstreet to trial a free parking plan in the CBD for three months.

Bay Venues Ltd CEO Gary Dawson outside the Cosmopolitan Club building that could be transformed into a Sports Centre of Excellence.

The recommendation is to trial the first two hours of parking for free from August to October.

Free parking is an option that's dogged every twist and turn in the city centre parking saga over recent years, which has seen a number of scenarios.

Free Saturday parking was trialled in 2012 and later dropped. The current three zone parking regime survived intact for three weeks after its introduction in July 2013 before it also succumbed to pressure from central city business interests. It is now a two-zone parking regime.

The council is also being asked today to agree in principle to handing over the former Mount Cosmopolitan Club building to Bay Venues Ltd for development as a centre for sporting excellence. Read more about it here.

The building has been vacant since council purchased it from the club in a deal that helped enable the Mount Greens project.

The council controlled organisation, Bay Venues Ltd, is seeking five months to explore the sporting proposal.

Councillors also get to debate the tenor and tone of its submission on the resource consent application to leave the remaining Rena wreck on the reef. The council has to submit to remain a party to the process, but today it has to officially place on record its approach to the Environment Court process.

A previous straw poll of councillors by SunLive last week found five who say the wreck should go.

Mayor Stuart Crosby is advocating the council approach to be neutral, which will allow the council to remain a party to the debate and to have input at each stage.

The Rena owners and insurers are seeking resource consent to leave the remainder of the wreck on Astrolabe Reef. Submissions close on August 8.

Today also sees the council bowing to political pressure and removing councillor Catherine Stewart as deputy chair of the Waste Water Management Review Committee in favour of an unelected tangata whenua representative.

The committee is a partnership comprised of elected councillors and Maori appointed from local iwi.

At the first meeting under the new council in March, Nga Potiki filed a notice of motion pointing out the committee is established on the consultation, active participation, and partnership principles of the Treaty of Waitangi while continuing to retain elected members as chair and deputy chair.

The committee supported the application, which can only be actioned by the full council.