Jobs committee to change its set-up

Press, 2 July 1985, Page 9

Jobs committee to change its set-up

The Christchurch City Council’s employment promotion committee, formed less than two years ago, may have met for the last time yesterday.

Councillors on the council’s standing committee voted it out of existence, to be replaced by a job creation working party as a sub-committee of the policy and finance committee.

Before it was formed after the last body elections in October, 1983, the employment promotion committee existed as a job creation working party. Councillors decided yesterday, at the urging of the committee’s chairman, Cr Vicki Buck, that the initial format of the working party offered greater flexibility. Cr Buck said the working party format encouraged a high degree of autonomy and was favoured by employment promotion depart-

ment staff. She said she had considered the future of the standing committee after Cr John Burn called for a report on it at a council meeting earlier this year. Cr Burn question whether the committee did enough or met often enough to be a standing committee. Cr Buck said the City Council had led the way among New Zealand local authorities in employment promotion. The difficulty of the standing committee set-up was that, because staff were busy with big numbers of people and projects, there was not time to get together sufficient material, requiring political input or decisions, to warrant a meeting each month.

Cr Buck, who chaired the previous working party, said she agreed with Cr Burn that a standing committee was not warranted. She was

anxious that the replacement system be fluid and flexible.

Because employment promotion did not sit easily with any other committee, and because it would tend to undervalue the employment promotion function, she did not believe the committee should be merged with another.

Instead, she opted for the reversion to a job creation working party, an option shared by the rest of the committee.

Cr Buck made the point' that the work of the committee would not cease, merely the monthly or bimonthly meetings. The working party would meet as required. The Mayor, Sir Hamish Hay, thanked Cr Buck for her work as chairman “because unless the council votes against it, this will be the last employment promotion committee meeting.”