Auckland Mayor Len Brown has ensured an Auckland Council Rainbow Panel will go ahead by offering to pay for its first 18 months out of the Mayor’s Budget. Debate was stalling due to concerns from numerous councillors about the cost, it being created in the middle of the current term, and whether the current advisory panels are even effective. It looked like it might not pass due to these worries – with Cameron Brewer and other councillors calling for a decision to be left until after the next election. Len Brown stepped in to take the budgetary issue off the table, so councillors could debate the pros and cons of the actual Rainbow Panel. Read more: "Now we have to make this work" “I don’t make through my Mayor’s Budget much in the way of commitments. But to actually achieve progress, as some of you have got a concern around budget, I would actually look to instruct my staff, out of our budget, to support this committee and its operation for the next 18 months,” Brown stated. “Now I do that for none other than I think it’s that significant, and I do not want to have people feeling compromised around this. You know I have a budget and I very rarely use it on anything except for staff employment to support me. So rather than make it a longwinded debate … I will therefore be prepared to recommend that the Rainbow Advisory Panel be established, and that it be supported over the next 18 months by the mayor’s office budget.” Brown said he could see no other way around it. “Because I can see we’re going to go from this debate to another one which could be potentially even worse, around the budget. It’s not a big budget.” The panel will need $15,000 for initial recruitment, and will have an annual operating cost of $56,500. This will be made up of $32,000 in meeting fees, $4,500 in catering, mileage and parking, plus $20,000 for two summits, but does not cover the costs of Council staff. Expressions of interest for the Panel are expected to open in early May. Interviews are likely to be in mid-June, with the first meeting set down for August.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 30th April 2015 - 1:18pm