Full interviews: Mayor Lewers and Councillor Gladding
April 2. Interviews recorded immediately after the decision to remove Niki Gladdding's council committee roles.
An extraordinary meeting of the Queenstown Lakes District Council today voted 7 - 2 in favour of stripping Councillor Niki Gladding of her council committee roles as a result of her releasing confidential information to the public connected with a plan to discharge large amounts of partially treated sewage into the Shotover River.
The sewage discharge started on Monday March 31st under emergency powers with the council seeking “retrospective consent” from the Otago Regional Council within 20 days.
Councillor Lisa Guy was on leave and Councillor Gladding abstained from the vote. The two councillors who opposed the action were Quentin Smith and Esther Whitehead.
Crux spoke with both Councillor Gladding and Mayor Glyn Lewers after the vote.
These are the full unedited interviews.
This is what Mayor Glyn Lewers said to media after the vote.
Crux has taken water samples from both the new discharge channel and the disposal field on Monday.
We’ll publish full details as soon as they are received.
Thanks to the Crux subscribers who funded this comprehensive series of tests.
I actually attended the meeting today, quite a shocking experience. Glyn talks about transparency and that the public heard what each Councillor had to say. With that he was referring to the section of the meeting when he opened the forum for debate. The "debate" was each Councillor clearly reading a prepared statement from their notes. There was no discussion, not even on points made by Councillors who clearly missed the point for the basis of the motion. And after 20 minutes the meeting wrapped up. This was a scripted exercise with a foregone conclusion. If that's how Council debate agenda items and come to decisions, we really need to put a stop to this prior to the election.
The rate payers are by far the largest stake holders therefore we should be in the loop 100%