A potential conflict of interest pointed out by a member of the Waitaki District Council’s executive team turned out to be a false alarm.
In March the district plan subcommittee voted to remove the Significant Natural Area classification (SNA) — called an overlay— from a single piece of land in the draft of the new district plan.
The result would be fewer restrictions on how that land could be used if the plan was notified.
The move was questioned by heritage, planning and regulatory group manager Roger Cook, who said the land belonged to a director of one of the council’s operations.
Although the potential conflict of interest was pointed out, the subcommittee agreed none of the councillors involved knew about it and made the decision without that knowledge, then moved on.
Last week subcommittee chairman Jim Thomson opened the most recent meeting with new information.
He said staff had investigated further and found the overlay in question was not on the property belonging to the director. A different overlay applied to their land, which had not been affected.
"Any of the inference by the keyboard warriors, etcetera, that we were duplicit [sic] is totally incorrect.
"On behalf of the staff and committee I do apologise to the landowner ... the inference was that he was involved, when in fact he wasn’t."
