Informal briefings or workshops for Tauranga city councillors are being defended by Mayor Stuart Crosby and supported by a majority of councillors.

Tauranga and BOP MPs at a recent informal briefing. Photo: Facebook.

Councillor Rick Curach is criticising the practice of councillor and staff briefings, and says many of them could have easily have been open to the public.

'Most councils surveyed do have closed door workshops, it's not an uncommon practice,” says Rick. 'My feeling is some of those workshops could be held in the open and it would be beneficial to provide some transparency around our early discussion around various issues and matters.”

He also wants the community to be told what the conversation topic is at the briefings.

'My rationale for that is it gives the opportunity for the press to ask questions and also for the public to be aware of matters we are discussing so if they wish to phone an elected member,” says Rick.

Mayor Stuart Crosby replied with a press release this week, refuting the secrecy label and saying most councillors support the closed briefings.

"The implication that decisions were being made 'in secret' is incorrect," says Stuart. 'All elected members take their obligations under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act seriously, and no Council decisions have been made in briefings and workshops.”

Among eight councillors Stuart says supports the practice is the second term councillor Bill Grainger who says the briefings give him more information on which to make decisions.

'On the previous council sometimes I walked out of the meetings asking myself, ‘Have I made the right decision,' where I felt we should have had more discussion,” says Bill.

Formal council meetings with the media and public present can be ‘quite tense' and sometimes when staff are asked for answers they fell a little uneasy about answering back says Bill.

'It's just when you are talking about any issues quite significant for the city. If you get a bunch of people sitting around the table to throw different ideas and issues around, if the media was sitting in there, you would get a little mixed up and fire the wrong shots.

'To me it's a stepping stone to get a better decision that gives a chance for staff and members to talk informally. But at the end of it no decisions are made. It gives me a little bit more peace of mind and a little bit more information before I make that final decision. So that's why I stand strong for these so called secret briefings.

'It's just like anything. Even in home life if you are making a decision on something significant, damn right you discuss it before hand and toss things around.”

Matt Cowley says there are very few briefings that don't result in public meetings.

Councillors were briefed on Parau Farms the future site of Bethlehem sport field development, shortly before the agenda went out to the public.

'They just wanted to provide context knowing the media and public can see the agenda a few days before the meeting,” says Matt. 'It gives the councillors the opportunity to see what is coming up a few days before the meeting. The briefing was just a general over view around what we do for active reserves for all the sports.”

Another example of the use of the briefings is the discussion over the Zespri site.

'There are an infinite number of options and all they did was test where the tide was flowing in terms of the councillors' thinking,” says Matt.

'Because otherwise there's no point in staff analysing a million different options, so we essentially gave them direction to say ‘these are the absolute noes' and let's continue putting the agenda up in terms of options, assessments for this wide span of options.”

The guidance was on what not to assess.

'So there is a relationship between the briefings and what goes into the agenda. We are just trying to manage staff workload in terms of options assessments.

'Usually there are millions of options to assess. They test the waters in terms of what are the terms of the absolute non-negotiables, that's as far as we go in terms of staff direction.”

He thinks following Rick Curach's other wish for the briefings agendas to be advertised could be misleading for the public.

'We don't know where those conversations go,” says Matt. 'So the agenda might not reflect what is actually being discussed. In reality it gives a false sense of where the discussion's going, so it's not a true reflection.

'As an example we might say we are talking about the CBD and end up talking about the museum. It would be disingenuous to say we are just going to be talking about the CBD. Just depending on where the conversation goes because we don't really know. I have no issue with it but I don't think it's going to help anyone.”

Councillor Bev Edlin says with seven new councillors following the elections in October 2013, there was a huge amount of catching up required.

'So if you want to make intelligent decisions it's a good opportunity to ask some of that background information.

'When you get a (agenda) paper you are getting a summation, two or three pages of what management is thinking so you really have to get your head around many issues before you even start to consider a decision.

'The benefit of it is you have got time to think about the issue you have a few days before it comes up so you are actually giving you time to make a very informed an intelligent decision. If you just rushed in without that what you have is a yes and no decision, and that's not healthy for the community. What we want is to make sure that we have the facts and that we make very considered decisions.”

Kelvin Clout says a lot of what is talked about in the closed workshops is 'pretty mundane operational stuff” which he doesn't think a lot of people would be interested in.

And many of the options discussed may never see the light of day. Reporting on them could create media storm, a massive distraction over something that's never going to happen.

'Most of it is just information gathering. We are not making decisions as such in those meetings and we can explore issues a lot more thoroughly without distractions,” says Kelvin.

He concede that if the public was aware of what was to be discussed people might come forward with relevant information.

'That's a potential argument,” he says. 'I guess what we want to avoid is if that was the case then pre the meeting you guys would be asking us all sorts of questions, then post the meeting you would be asking us all sorts of questions. In many ways it's just a distraction.

'From the public perspective they may be calling them secret meetings, I would just call them briefings and workshops.”

The workshops used to be open meetings, but Kelvin says the end result was often media dog fights and skirmishes that don't present the council in a positive and united light.

'I can understand from media perspective you have less stories to sell. At the end of the day we are making some quite sensible decisions form the process.”