From: Lee Vandervis <lee@vandervision.co.nz>
Date: Friday, 10 December 2021 at 8:03 AM
To: EditorODT <editor@odt.co.nz>, “Nicholas. Smith” <nicholas.smith@xtra.co.nz>, Grant McKenzie <grant@alliedpress.co.nz>, Grant Miller <grant.miller@odt.co.nz>
Subject: Out of the room on zoom? Letter to the Editor 129 words

Letter to the Editor

Out of the room on zoom? 

Dear Barry,
The DCC CEO claim that I can still do my Councillor job by being needlessly excluded from the room and given a public camera feed on zoom is ridiculous.
Not only have lock-down Council zoom meetings proved to be awful with ongoing technical glitches, speaker order disputes, inability to read the room and motion amendments, hear Points of Order sources and supplementary information all made worse by Mayoral abuse of his zoom mute button facility, but when everybody is on zoom there are at least 18 selectable  cameras in play for each participant that everyone can access, which can’t happen for just one remote zoom participant.
The only ‘advantage’ to a zoom Council meeting is that you can get away with partaking in your underwear if you are clever.
Kind regards,

Cr. Lee Vandervis

Letter to the Editor

The Silencing of the Councillors.

Mayor Hawkins never allowed Council’s 3 Water’s Reform response to even get to discussion as claimed in the ODT [21/9/21]
In an unprecedented Mayoral move, the Zoom meeting was shut down during question time when it became obvious that too many Councillors were not going to accept the Mayor’s proposed letter to MP Mahuta in which he claimed  “Common goals with the Government”, and ”broad support for reforms that enable Ngai Tahu to meaningfully participate” in the proposed 50% Iwi Governance of Mahuta’s 3 Waters Reform.
Mayor Hawkins is proposing to redo the meeting again next week, again in remote Zoom, despite Councils such as Christchurch and Wellington being back in public venues again.
Perhaps this is because Zoom has the advantage of allowing our Mayor to easily silence and boot everybody out when he does not like the way too many Councillors are questioning his agenda.

Kind regards,

Cr. Lee Vandervis

Newspeople?

If you want to print a NEWS story concerning me, you should ask me for comment first, especially since there has been no time pressure as in this instance.

My comment would have been as follows, which you might still usefully print if indeed news is what your business is, rather than advertising.

The Court case and the Appeal have been necessary to challenge the DCC bureaucracy’s public attack on an elected representative during an election process, to get rulings on unprecedented uses/abuses of Code of Conduct provisions, and to preserve elected representatives’ ability to criticise Council employees and/or management.

It has nothing to do with trying to get off a $12 parking ticket as repeatedly falsely claimed.

The Appeal issues before the Court are:

1. Did the Chief Executive of the Dunedin City Council follow the procedures in the Dunedin City Council Code of Conduct in forwarding the complaint against the Appellant to the 2nd Respondent for investigation;

2. Was the 2nd Respondent validly appointed to investigate complaints under the Dunedin City Council Code of Conduct;

3. Did the 2nd Respondent act contrary to the principles of natural justice and the investigation he carried out pursuant to the Dunedin City Council Code of Conduct;

4. Should the Appellant obtain the declarations sought;

5. Should the decisions of the Dunedin City Council on 11 December 2019 be set aside;

I have personally paid for all my own legal costs to settle these important issues in the public interest, while the DCC Bureaucracy has used public funds via supposed Code of Conduct which influenced the Mayoral election and frustrated my Judicial Review of their actions in their own interests. 
A significant confirmation from the Court process so far has been the acknowledgement that ex-CEO Bidrose ‘was concerned that Cr. Vandervis might become Mayor’.

Cr. Lee Vandervis

“News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising.” – Lord Northcote