Beleaguered West Coast regional councillor Allan Birchfield is calling for council chairman Peter Haddock to stand down from any involvement with the multimillion-dollar Franz Josef flood protection contracts, claiming the chairman has too great a conflict of interest.
Speaking to LDR, Cr Haddock said that the only conflict he had was that his son was a director of MBD.
"That is the contracting company that was awarded stage 1 works for the Waiho River north and south bank walls some six to 12 months prior to my election as a West Coast regional councillor.
"I have no financial or operational interest in the family member’s company. I have always declared an interest at any meeting as a matter of transparency with regards items involving his company", Cr Haddock said.
Cr Birchfield was rebuffed after making the claim at Tuesday’s meeting.
Audit and risk chairman Cr Frank Dooley cited the council’s standing orders, arguing that the matter had to be referred first to the operations committee, from which Cr Birchfield is now excluded.
The tensions between the Greymouth gold-miner and the council date back to 2021 when he was replaced as chairman by his deputy, Cr Haddock, and formally censured for allegedly leaking details of a severance deal with then chief executive Heather Mabin.
At a meeting of Franz Josef ratepayers last month to consider a $6 million government loan offer for more flood protection, Cr Haddock declared a conflict of interest at the outset.
Cr Birchfield’s motion, emailed to other councillors and media last Friday, called for no further work to be done on the north side of the Waiho River once the existing contract was complete.
The council’s engineers recommended the extension of the newly strengthened northern stop bank to protect the Franz Josef oxidation ponds.
But Cr Birchfield said that was unnecessary and the ponds — on which the town’s sewerage system depends — were the responsibility of the Westland District Council.
He intends to move that the government funds of $1.8m remaining in the contract should instead be used to pay for protection work on the south bank of the Waiho River.
Contracts for that should be let in two separate tenders to allow local contractors to bid for the work, he said.
Rock needed for the job should be sourced locally rather than trucked from the MBD-owned Whataroa Quarry, Cr Birchfield said.
He wanted Cr Haddock to exclude himself from that entire process.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Cr Haddock handed the item over to his deputy, Cr Brett Cummings, to handle.
The council voted to defer the matter until next month because it had not been sent to the chief executive or filed within the required five days before the meeting.
Cr Dooley said Cr Birchfield’s motion should be dealt with by the operations committee, not the council, citing a rule in the standing orders.
West Coast Regional Council chief executive Darryl Lew said the standard procedure in both the public and private sectors was for self-declaration of any conflict of interest.
— Lois Williams, Local Democracy Reporter
— LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
