Two district councillors opted out of a discussion on payment for their services this week, saying they did not want to ''write their own cheques'', despite the Remuneration Authority advising they should take part.
Central Otago district councillors Neil Gillespie and Martin McPherson declared an interest when the matter was raised at a full council meeting on Wednesday and refused to join the discussion about remuneration for the council's hearing panellists.
The Remuneration Authority released a ruling late last year which changed the way hearings panel members could be paid, council planning and environment manager Louise van der Voort said. As well as being compensated for hearing applications and inspecting sites, members should be paid for their time preparing for hearings as well, the authority said.
''The authority said the most important thing was that you had a prepared panel,'' she said. A representative from the authority also said the councillors on the panel should be involved in the council discussion about the matter, Ms van der Voort said.
Cr Gillespie disagreed with that stance.
''I find their decision disturbing that says I'm required to sit here and write my own cheque.''
Cr McPherson was ''flabbergasted'' he was being advised to take part and said he, too, felt like he was being asked to ''write my own cheque''.
The two men make up the hearings panel with independent commissioners John Lane and Terry Emmitt, both of whom were councillors but lost their seats at the last election.
All costs associated with hearing resource consent applications are recovered from applicants, but costs related to hearing council-initiated district plan changes are funded by ratepayers.
Cr Stu Duncan said the aim was to make resource consents ''easier and cheaper, [to] make it the fairest and reasonable and cheapest for the person doing it''.
The resource consent charges included administration, research consultation and report preparation, disbursements, public notice advertisements, photocopying, engineer's fees, planning consultant charges and hearings panel remuneration.
Ms van der Voort had looked at six recent resource consent applications and worked out how much paying for preparation time and site visits would add to the remuneration. Adding preparation time added between 6% and 15% to the cost, while adding a site visit and mileage payment added between 12% and 27%.
The costs of the hearings had ranged from $1500 to $5063 before any preparation time or site visits were added.
Panellists were paid an hourly rate of $115 for the chairman (Mr Lane) and $92 for the other panellists, she said in her report.
The council agreed to pay panellists for preparation time (provided the time did not exceed the time spent on deliberations), to provide a council vehicle for site inspections, and to continue to recover all costs from applicants.
