Kawerau mayor Malcolm Campbell believes online meetings may be “the way of the future”.
Kawerau District Council held its first official meeting via Zoom this week with councillors streaming in from their homes, or in Mr Campbell’s case, his butchery.
Mr Campbell said he was a bit of a “dinosaur” but adapting to the Covid-19 lockdown had led him to embrace the online technology.
“It’s early days and there have been a few hiccups but I’m really quite enjoying it,” he said.
“I’ve been going down to my shop to attend the meetings as the connection is better than when I’m at home. We don’t have high-speed broadband here yet.”
Although Mr Campbell doesn’t believe all council meetings should be held in virtual meeting rooms in the future, he does think it could be useful to attend meetings far away as well as making council business more accessible to the public.
He said hosting online meetings could save the “huge expense” of having, on occasion, to fly down to Wellington and back for one meeting.
He said technology could also be used to record meetings and make them available online so a wider demographic could attend and view councillors in action.
Kawerau council meetings are usually well attended by the public many of whom also speak at the public forum.
However, most of these people then leave without staying to listen to the entire meeting.
A recording of Tuesday’s regulatory and services committee meeting will be made available on the council’s website and Facebook page and there are plans to livestream the next council meeting on April 28.
Mr Campbell said this would make council meetings more accessible to those who were unable to attend in person.
“We had been pushing to develop this technology since the last elections,” he said.
“The lockdown has simply pushed this to the forefront. We have in the past been accused of hiding things and I would like for all our meetings to be open to the public as possible so they can hear and see everything. I have definitely no issues with live streaming meetings, it’s an open democracy.”
