from a piece by Tom Hunt on Te Pou (The Post)

Andrew Little met his new chief executive within 24 hours of being elected, with council culture on the agenda. Six months in, Wellington’s new mayor says “we still have a way to go”.

The tail-wagging-the-dog image of the council is exemplified in the new council offices on Jervois Quay, where staff allocated who was based where. The mayor will meet dignitaries in a first floor office with a view of a busy road. The council executive are said to have expansive harbour views.

But that image was there in the Reading fiasco, where most councillors were kept out of the loop of the $32 million deal for months, or the advice council staff passed on to councillors about the planned sale of council airport shares. The list, pre-dating Little and chief executive Matt Prosser, goes on.

“There has been a bit of a culture of the council officers doing their thing, fulfilling their statutory role, as they would see it, but not necessarily engaging to the quality I would expect with councillors,” Little told Te Pou in an interview to mark his six month anniversary.

It was a topic he bought up with Prosser during a two-hour meeting on October 12, the day after he won the mayoralty. Prosser, he said, did not disagree.

“Part of the challenge is to re-orient council to the point where councillors … set policy, they set the direction and the role of council officers to make sure that what they’re doing, the way they do their job, is consistent with that. I think we still have a way to go on that.”

These types of comments are not ones Kapiti mayor Holborow would ever make. –Eds