Poor seminar timing kept councillors from going

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 8

Poor seminar timing kept councillors from going

The bad timing of the National Local Body Training Seminar for Women, to be held in Auckland on February 21 to 23, disqualified 80 per cent of councillors from attending, said the chairman of the Paparua County Council, Mr J. Y. Pethig. At last evening’s finance committee meeting, he said the seminar was held too near the end of a local body term.

“As well as this, we usually hold an educationnal seminar for councillors in Christchurch at the beginning of each new term,” he said. Cr J. S. M. Kyle said the seminar was “splitting

hairs. If you are going to have county councillors, you have county councilors and make no differences between them,” he said. Cr J. F. Thomas, however said a council should support any of their young female councillors who wanted to attend the seminar. Licence fees It has been recommended that licence fees for food premises, eating houses, hairdressers, mobile shops, hawkers, camping grounds, offensive trades, boarding houses, public buildings, apartment houses, and drainage and plumbing be

increased in April. It would be the first fee Increases since April, 1979, and some would at least double. A food premises licence would rise from $25 to $5O, a hairdressing salon licence from $5 to $4O, and an eating house licence from $2O to $5O. Boarding houses and apartments would be charged licence fees for the first time. Mushrooms A new composting system installed at Meadow Mushrooms in Prebbleton should eventually help end the unpleasant smells from the site, said the County Engineer, Mr J. D. Annan. Mr Annan said he had received several complaints in the last few days about the smell, but that the new composter should solve the problem. “Hopefully it will be successful eventually, once it is over any initial problems,” he said.