The trust is in the process of carrying out a five-yearly review of ownership of all 14 million shares in the North Otago electricity lines company and had received more than 1400 public submissions when they closed on Friday. The last review in 2006 attracted 13 submissions.
Some submission have more than one name, individual signatures being close to 2000.
Trust chairwoman Helen Brookes said yesterday processing the submissions meant it had had to change the timetable for making decisions.
The trust board met on Monday and had decided to hear submissions on June 30 in the Opera House Inkbox, the day it was due to hold a public meeting to make a final decision.
It would now meet on July 7, before its annual general meeting, to make a final decision.
Under the trust deed, it had to make the submissions publicly available and then give two weeks' notice of the meeting to make a decision and annual general meeting.
"Before that, we have to process all the submissions, including preparing a schedule listing the names of individual submitters. That will be time consuming," Dr Brookes said.
All the shares are owned by the trust on behalf of consumers, 12,157 of who, in the area from Shag Point to the Waitaki River and inland to the Hakataramea Valley and Lake Ohau, receive an annual discount off their electricity bills from any surplus made by Network Waitaki.
This year, Network Waitaki paid out a total of $2.67 million.
An unfounded rumour that ownership of the shares could be changed from a consumer trust to a community trust, with loss of the discount, prompted unprecedented interest in the ownership review. Submissions were overwhelmingly in support of retaining the present structure.
Both the trust and Network Waitaki board of directors had recommended the shares remain in the trust's ownership.
