Attending a Meeting

Attending a Council, Committee or Community Board meeting

You can attend any council, committee or community board meeting unless it is public excluded (see below). You are welcome to come and listen, but you cannot interrupt or make a comment.

Public excluded meetings

A local authority has to provide a good reason if they wish to exclude the public from council or committee meetings - this also includes the media. The reasons for excluding the public are listed in the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987.

Making a submission to a public consultation

If you have made a submission to a public consultation you can request to come along to present your submission at a formal meeting. You can do this by ticking the box on the submission form.

Where our meetings are held

Council and committee meetings are held in Ngā Hau e Whā council chambers in our Alexandra office. The community board meetings are held in our local service centres.

Who will be at the meeting

There will be the chair of the meeting, elected members and council staff. Other members of the public and the media may also be there.

What happens before the meeting

If you have made a submission to a consultation and requested to come along and present, we will contact you and let you know the date, time and venue of the meeting. You will be allocated 10 minutes which includes question and answer time. We invite several people to come and talk during a one hour time slot, so please be prepared to stay for that length of time. Let us know if a particular time during that hour suits you better and we will do our best to accommodate this i.e. at the beginning of the hour or towards the end.

Please let us know if you have any special needs or require any audio visual facilities. If you wish to present your submission in Māori or sign language please contact us at least two working days before the meeting. We may need to arrange for an interpreter so the more time you can give us the better.

If you want to bring written material then please make sure that there are enough copies. Council and Committee meetings require 20 copies, Cromwell and Vincent Community Boards will require 14 copies and the Maniototo and Teviot Valley will need 10 copies. We are happy to help with your printing. Please talk to the Governance Support team at a time before the day of the meeting and they can assist.

At the meeting

Please choose a seat around the edge of the meeting room. When it is your turn to speak the chair will introduce you to the meeting and invite you up to the table. Any equipment you have prearranged to use will be available to you. When you have finished speaking elected members may ask you a few questions. The questions will be for clarification, no debate will take place.

Once you have spoken you may take a seat back in the public seating area and listen to the rest of the public proceedings or leave the meeting.

After the meeting

The elected members will consider all of the information they receive and use this to help inform their decisions.