As the city council moves towards webcasting its full council and committee meetings, the Waikouaiti Coast Community Board is not convinced.
The board was the only one not to support the idea, as the community boards were asked about their preferences following agreement by the full council in February to allow sound recording of its public meetings.
The public, including media, were previously allowed to take photos, notes and film, but not to record sound at council meetings.
The council intends that the public parts of full council and committee meetings are to be webcast and the public will also be able to make sound recordings.
Community board meetings will not be recorded or broadcast by the council.
Waikouaiti Coast community board chairman Gerard Collings said he personally thought sound recording ''wasn't really a bad thing'' and ''might mean people are more careful about what they tend to say in a public forum''.
The members of the board not in favour, however, had concerns about how the information would be used, particularly about the potential for ''selective editing'', he said.
Mr Collings said he expected the matter would be revisited after the coming local body elections.
He personally felt it made sense for community boards' standing orders to be aligned to the council's.
Council governance manager Sandy Graham said it was expected the public would be able to record the sound at meetings, starting from the next council meeting on April 8.
The council expected by then to have set up its own interim system for capturing sound at meetings.
Its resolution required that it be able to make a full version of each meeting available to the public, before it allowed anyone else to make sound recordings.
It intended to eventually webcast the meetings, but in the interim, the meetings would be recorded on to a hard-drive attached to the sound systems of the council chamber and the Edinburgh Room, where committee meetings were held.
It would not be known how much webcasting would cost until it was investigated further, Ms Graham said.
